Lacey James had been working for Redpath Catering for three months when Freddie Mercury died.

"Fuck," she mouthed around her fist and bit harder into her numb flesh. The news was hours old, but still her oesophagus made odd wheezy hiccups, and she couldn't swallow past the perpetual lump of granite in her chest. "Fuck fuck fuck."

All going terrible, the weird black sparkles that invaded her vision at a whiff of death would arrive soon, the awful memories of helping nurse Stevie and Toad would nail her, or the creepy old lady that haunted funerals on her catering beat would turn up. Or all at once.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 49 for February 13, 2018. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I last brought you any fiction—to make it up to you, this episode is part of a double issue, which means that there are six originals and six reprints coming your way as quickly as I can get them out for you.

I would also like to officially welcome Nibedita Sen as GlitterShip's official assistant editor. She will be helping out with keeping the Ship running smoothly... and hopefully more on time than it has been in the past.

Today we have a poem and a GlitterShip original for you. The poem is "Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting," by Bogi Takács read by Bogi eirself.

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person currently living in the US as a resident alien. Eir speculative fiction, poetry and nonfiction have been published in a variety of venues like Clarkesworld, Apex, Strange Horizons and podcast on Glittership, among others. You can follow Bogi on Twitter, Instagram and Patreon, or visit eir website at www.prezzey.net. Bogi also recently edited Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2016, for Lethe Press.

Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting

by Bogi Takács

Try it now – guaranteed enjoyment or your money back!

Loss of life not covered under the terms of the user agreement.

The classic original: Shapeshift to a surface color the inverse of your environment [reverse chameleon]

To confuse people: Shapeshift to duplicate a nearby object, then change as others move you around [pulse in rhythm / undulate / who turned the sound off]

For a drinking game: Shapeshift into a weasel for 5 seconds whenever someone drinks a stout [some puns deserve to remain obscure] [mind: wildlife needs to be careful around humans]

To make a somewhat mangled political statement: Shapeshift into an object whose possession is illegal in the state and/or country you are entering [no human is illegal] [weaponize your thoughts / fall under export restrictions] [make sure to read the small print]

To receive blessings: Shapeshift into a monk when in the 500 m radius of a Catholic church, respond to Laudetur [nunc et in æternum – practice] [works well in combination with previous]

For the trickster types: Shapeshift into a set of food items, then change back to your original shape as the first person attempts to eat you [do not change back] [change back after you passed through the alimentary canal / the plumbing / all water returns to the sea] To satisfy extreme curiosity: Shapeshift into a cis person, at random intervals of time. Cry for 5 minutes. Change back [how did that feel?]

The GlitterShip original short story is "Granny Death and the Drag King of London" by A.J. Fitzwater, also read by the author.

Amanda Fitzwater is a dragon wearing a human meat suit from Christchurch, New Zealand. A graduate of Clarion 2014, she’s had stories published in Shimmer Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and in Paper Road Press's "At The Edge" anthology. She also has stories coming soon at Kaleidotrope and PodCastle. As a narrator, her voice has been heard across the Escape Artists Network, on Redstone SF, and Interzone. She tweets under her penname as @AJFitzwater

There is a content warning for slurs, homophobia and a lot discussion of AIDS deaths.

Granny Death and the Drag King of London

By

A.J. Fitzwater

Monday, November 25, 1991.

Lacey James had been working for Redpath Catering for three months when Freddie Mercury died.

"Fuck," she mouthed around her fist and bit harder into her numb flesh. The news was hours old, but still her esophagus made odd wheezy hiccups, and she couldn't swallow past the perpetual lump of granite in her chest. "Fuck fuck fuck."

All going terrible, the weird black sparkles that invaded her vision at a whiff of death would arrive soon, the awful memories of helping nurse Stevie and Toad would nail her, or the creepy old lady that haunted funerals on her catering beat would turn up. Or all at once.

The brick wall of the east end church (where the hell am I today?) didn't do its job of holding her up and she slumped behind the rubbish skip. She didn't care if that bastard Rocko docked her pay for a wet and dirty uniform. She didn't care about the latest job rejection letter crumpled in her pocket. She didn't care if the cold bricks made her back seize up; there'd be no sleep tonight.

The back door pinged on its spring-hinge, banging off the scabby handrail, and Lacey sprang to her feet.

"Oi!" Rocko Redpath barked, all six foot two of his dirty blondness. "How long does it take one to take out the rubbish. Move one's dyke arse."

Not a dyke, arsehole.

Lacey let her square ragged nails do the work on her palms.

"Coming."

"You better be."

The stagnant scent of cabbage and wine biscuits gusted out as the door banged shut.

Why do I have to keep putting up with this git? Because I can't get a serious job in this town. No one wants a dyke import. Loser.

Lacey knuckled her dry eyes and straightened her ill-fitting jacket best she could. The darts under the arms made it too tight across the chest even though she'd bound up with a fresh Ace bandage that morning.

Come on, loser. Be the best king Freddie'd want you to be.

Inside, the strange blast of cold concrete and oven heat sunk claws into Lacey's flesh. She bit her lip hard to hold back another dry heave sob. Breathing deeply sometimes delayed the black sparkles. But this was a funeral. They were bound to come.

Rocko Redpath lorded over it all. Redpath sounded like a lad but he dressed Saint Pauls, pretending he was James Bond on a Maxwell Smart budget.

"Jesus, you kiwis are all so bloody lazy." He sneered, the perfect villain. "What's the matter, Lace? Who took a dump in your cornflakes?"

Only my friends call me Lace, arsehole.

"Got the news a friend died," she mumbled as she swung towards the door with a tray of finger sandwiches.

Was that a flinch from Rocko?

"Aww, poor widdle Wace all boo hoo. You gonna cry, widdle girl?" He clicked his fingers in front of her face, blocking her path, sunshine breaking across his craggy, broken-nose face. "Wait, wait. I think I heard it on the news. That rock star fag you like. That who you mean?"

That...feeling. A tickle on the back of her neck; it was how she imagined if the black sparkles were made flesh. All jokes about gaydars aside, she was one hundred percent dead on (dead. on) at picking them. She knew some closeted gay guys had massive internalized issues, but Rocko?

One of the girls whipping cream flinched, her pink mouth popping open in shock. "But Freddie only announced two days ago..."

Rocko snapped his fingers in her direction and pointed, finger quivering slightly. "Quiet. Lace. That homo with the mo. That who you cut up about?"

Shut up I need this job shut up. Good girls don't get into fights.

"Ah forget it. One less virulent motherfucker clogging up the NHS." Rocko flipped a hand. Lacey flinched away. Rocko's eyes were red like he was on another bender. "Do yer job. Go say hello to your favorite funeral-loving geriatric."

"What?"

"Eff-day Granny-yay," Rocko stage whispered as he whisked aside dramatically and held the door open.

Fuck. Now this. Granny Death.

Parishioners were doddering into the hall while bored kids played in the dusty blue velvet curtains. Ancient radiant heaters fizzed and popped, and Lacey dodged along the walls from cold to heat. She needed a new pair of brogues as desperately as she needed a haircut, but neither was in her next pay day.

The black sparkles arrived. The languor of death clung tight to church walls, its nails scraping along the gravel lodged in her chest like on a blackboard.

Lacey swung with the sandwich tray through waves of evil-smelling olds. Sure enough, there she was in all her silver coiffed, green-pink-cream-yellow floral glory. The scent of lavender smacked Lacey in the face clear across the hall.

Fucking Granny Death. An emotional vampire. An ever moving shark in necrophiliac waters. She was worse than the front page of The Sun.

"Excuse me, dear. Could you tell me where the powder room is please?"

Fucking hell!

She was Right There. Her face wrinkled by a smile and expectation, but still oddly smooth. Her eyes weren't blue like Lacey had expected but a very light green.

God, I spaced out again. Concentrate. They'll send you right back to the loony bin.

"Umm." Where it always is in these cold concrete pits of 1950s hell, you creepy old bat. "Down that ramp by the kitchen, then straight ahead."

"Thank you, dear."

Granny Death's walking stick thumped a death march on the heel-scarred floor.

Lacey bit her free fist again, squeezing her eyes shut. They made a liquid pop when she opened them. The black sparkles parted just enough.

In between the strands of perfectly set silver hair on the back of Granny Death's head, a gold eye stared out at Lacey, bloodshot, like it had been crying.

What the...?! That's it. They said this is what happens to girls who wear too much black. I've got that fucking virus and it's made me batshit.

The idea of some loony old lollypop lady going round churches scaring the beejus out of mourners weighed heavy.

If she turned up at Freddie's funeral, I fucking swear...

The stench of ammonia and cheap soap hit Lacey full in the face as she pushed into the ladies toilets.

Granny Death leaned against the cracked sink, hands folded primly before her.

"Well, this is interesting," she said.

"What?" Lacey pulled up short. The finality of the door boom sealed her in.

Oh shit. What if she's some sort of serial killer?

"You can See."

"What?"

Granny Death sighed and rolled her eyes. Lacey shuddered, imagining that third eye doing the same. "Come now, dear. I know you're not stupid. I don't have all the time in the world. There are other funerals to get to today. What did you See?"

Freddie, help me. That fucking virus is eating my brain.

"Uh. I get black sparkles," Lacey stammered, wriggling her fingers beside her temples. "But you...you've got an eye in the back of your head."

"Hmm."

Granny Death's stillness disturbed Lacey.

Come on, this is absurd!

"What do you mean 'hmm'?" she demanded, hands on hips in an attempt to make herself bigger. "You have an eye in the back of your head, lady!"

"I mean 'hmm' because usually they see horns—" Granny Death twiddled her fingers above her head. "—or hooves. Or wings. Sometimes just bloody stumps of wings, depending."

"On what?" Lacey glanced behind her, but no one came in.

No rampaging horde of hell beasts?

Granny Death chuckled as if she could hear the noise constantly taking up space in Lacey's head. "Whatever they gods pleases them. Whatever they think lurks under the skin of a harmless old lady."

Lacey backed up two steps. "Lady, there is no god in this world if AIDS exists. There's an explanation for everything. I'm having a meltdown coz it's a bad day. You don't seem harmless to me. What are you? What's with all the funerals?"

"Hmm. So you've seen me before." Granny Death stroked a beard that wasn't there.

"Damn right. I see you stuffing sandwiches in your handbag at least twice a week." Now it was Lacey's turn to fold her arms, but it didn't have quite the same effect as Granny Death's quiet poise. "Is this how you get your jollies? Knocking off the catering staff, scaring them into not reporting you to the police?"

Granny Death didn't stare at Lacey like she imagined a whacko would size up their prey.

"You have questions. You deserve answers." Granny Death scooped up her walking stick and took an assured step towards towards Lacey. "I take the sandwiches because I like them. No, I don't like scaring people. Funerals are hard enough places as they are. And people who See—" Granny Death scratched the back of her head. "—do so because they are close to the end of the line."

Oh god, I do have that fucking virus.

Despite her tiny stature, Granny Death came face to face with Lacey. She continued: "You have lost someone very dear to you recently. That agony slices through The Templace. We feel those cuts."

Lacey flinched, but Granny Death didn't pat her on the shoulder awkwardly in comfort. She didn't even say she was sorry.

What's the point of saying you're sorry to the bereaved, anyway?

The black danced close around Lacey's vision again.

Granny Death nodded. "When you're ready for the full truth, we'll be ready for you. We'll find you. We need more good people."

Granny Death pushed out through the toilet door, her lavender scent obscuring the dankness.

"Wait!" Lacey called. "Who is this 'we' you speak of?"

The third eye winked, and Granny Death glanced back. She didn't smile or grimace, sneer or raise her eyebrows.

"Death," came her quiet reply. "I work for the entity you know as Death."

Tuesday, November 26, 1991.

Even the tube couldn't lull Lacey into a desperate rest.

Calling in sick allowed Rocko a hysteria-tinged rant about lazy kiwi dykes. The tea-bags her flatmates had left for her—what she had stolen from the Redpath pantries had run out—gave her no sense of comradeship. Throwing the letter from Gore, New Zealand unopened in the rubbish extended none of the usual satisfaction. Wrapping herself around a hot water bottle in her dank Hackney flat didn't bring any comfort. The impossible backwards lean, open lips, and microphone as extension of self of her Queen: Live at Wembley poster was a constant reminder.

I'll never see darling Freddie live, see him alive, now. I'm two years too late. Did you know way back when, dear Freddie? Did you have that fucking alien in your brain, and you were just ignoring it? Don't look don't look don't look don't look death in the eye.

The crowd on the tube did their best to ignore the girl in a cheap suit, though her pride and joy was the only thing holding her together. The granite lump in her chest grew too large, the mountain of its pressure almost choking her. The younger ones eyed the AIDS posters like they'd leap out and bite them.

Kitty. Stevie. Gin-Gin. Toad. Paulette. Manil.All Gone. All invaded. All stats. Maybe I picked it up off the shit piss blood vomit. Maybe it's been dormant in my mattress all this time.

She'd had no experience in nursing, but she did her best when the families of her friends shut their doors, ignoring their wasting away until it was time to play the magnanimous heroes and return their soul to where it didn't want to be.

A strange thought grabbed her: Had Granny been there? Had she witnessed?

A too skinny guy in a too big trench coat coughed, and Lacey swore everyone in the tube car flinched.

Never going to eat going to die emaciated and covered in lesions never going to fuck again. Would Granny Death come and laugh at my funeral?

She'd be the only one I'd want there.

Where had that come from?

Logan Place would now be packed with, but a crowd meant touching. A crowd meant all new sorts of pain, a public display of grief she couldn't face yet.

Old Compton Street felt the safest place to be. The girls there knew when to touch and when to not. It would be a shitter of a wake, but at least she could bum free alcohol off Blue.

Someone behind her barked a laugh just like Rocko's and she had to turn to check it wasn't him. He'd been his usual self on the phone, but his nastiness had sounded forced. Judging tone of voice, pitch, weight of the words had been a skill she'd honed over her years to avoid the knife tip slipping under her ribs.

Questions. Granny said she had the answers. What a load of horse shit. No one has answers to anything. Not a yes for a good job. Not to this virus.

"STOP WHINING," said her mother, thousands of miles and years ago. "Why can't you just wear a dress like all good little girls? You'd look so much prettier."

I don't want to be pretty. I want to be handsome.

The walk from King's Cross looked the same. The tourists, the red buses, the yuppies in their Savile Row suits, the casuals in their too clean Adidas trackies yelling slurs at the too tired girls in their big wigs and small skirts. Some caring Soho record store blared out Bohemian Rhapsody. Street lights flickered up, too bright for the street, too dim for the faces.

How can you all carry on like nothing has changed?

It had taken Lacey an entire year to work up the gumption to walk back on to Old Compton Street after a disastrous first visit to the Pembroke in Earls Court. Even three years on she often had to stop and take a moment to check if she was allowed on the street, but women in suits or ripped jeans and plaid either ignored her or offered small up-nods.

Lacey shivered, resisting the urge to touch-check the mascara on her upper lip and sideburns. Her chest binding and suit were alright, but just alright. She didn't have the money to keep up with Soho.

I like my suit. My suit likes me.

The door to The Belle Jar was propped open. Lacey watched a pair of kings enter the black maw before working up the courage to approach. Flipper sat inside the stairs on a slashed up chair, licking closed a thin rollie. The muscled bouncer stood up when she saw Lacey, but didn't offer a hand.

"You're taking it well." Flipper undid the two buttons of her Sonny Crockett jacket, then did them back up.

Lacey shrugged.

"You want in? Blue says no cover charge tonight and tomorrow."

"Good of her. Might ask for a shift."

"Yeah. The girls have been crying into their Midoris since the news broke. It's like a fucking morgue in there." Flipper offered Lacey a drag of her cigarette, but Lacey shook her head. More down-in-the-mouth kings, queens, femmes, and butches passed by (just for once all moving in the same direction; marching to or from death?). Flipper blew out a long trail of smoke. "Funeral is tomorrow. Private thing."

"Yeah, saw that on the news." Lacey couldn't look at Flipper in the eye. The big girl had tears forming (no no don't please fuck what do I do).

Lacey barrelled down the stairs. The sticky-sweet stench of years of liquor trod into the carpet, sweaty eye shadow, weed, and clove cigarettes rose up to greet her. Bronski Beat throbbed gently from the speakers. Girls lounged over every upright surface, too many glasses scattered across table and bar top.

Lacey accepted the offering without complaint despite her bad relationship with tequila.

How is anyone alive while Freddie isn't?

"We only just get the country back from the old witch, now this." Lacey tried on a joke for size.

"God fuck the Iron Lady," Blue growled.

They tugged the bottoms of their waistcoats, saluted with their glasses, and slammed.

"Next one you'll have to pay for, darlin'," Blue said after they coughed it down.

"Don't worry. I 'spect tonight will be easy selling the top shelf." Lacey took a long hard look around the bar. It was already too full. When girls got all up in their liquor, tears and fists tended to fly.

"Hey, Blue! You see this old bag here?" Lacey pointed at Granny Death smoothing out her gloves on the sticky bar top.

Blue gave a don't-care shrug and turned away to serve Lipstick again. "Sure. I see her round here all the time. Her money is good as any other girl's."

All the time? Oh my god, not Blue no no no NO.

Lacey sat, blocking Granny's view of the rest of the bar. "This funeral bloody well isn't for you," she growled.

"Perhaps not," Granny replied. Her eye shadow was a green twenty years out of date. "But I go wherever I'm needed, and tonight I am needed here."

Lacey leaned to get a better look at the back of Granny's head. Sure enough, the red-rimmed gold eye blinked at her. She gestured at Blue to pour out a couple fingers of whiskey. Granny smoothed out a note, Blue pinged it into the register without comment, and made the first mark on Lacey's tally.

Lacey drank without salute. "Come to get your jollies off a pack of miserable kings and queens, huh?"

"I get my jollies off a good cup of tea and watching Star Trek," Granny replied, sipping delicately at her drink. "I get no joy from seeing people in pain. I'd take it all away from all you lovely dears if I could. I like your clothes. I like your faces." Granny sighed. "It's not fair. He was a very nice chap."

It's not fair.

Lacey grimaced and helped herself to another measure. She didn't care she was drinking too fast. "Then what's with—" She circled a hand. "—doing Death's dirty work tonight? Freddie's funeral is tomorrow."

Granny dabbed her lips with a paper serviette. "Mister Bulsara does not get just one funeral, my dear. There are many funerals, big and small, happening all over the world. The unmarked ones are just as important. There's no quality control on this particular passing. Mister Bulsara's essence has well and truly passed through a Rift to the next dimension. A stable Rift in the Templace is simply a random, if rare, occurrence."

Lacey rudely crunched ice through the speech. "Nice line, grandma."

Granny placed the glass carefully on the bar. "I am no one's grandmother, let alone anyone's mother. This is a calling, not a job. And besides, despite what this form may allude to, I could not procreate if I wished to. Which I do not."

Bloody hell.

"I have another, more important reason to be at this particular funeral," Granny continued. "I am here for you."

"He's not gay. He's bisexual, like me. And Parsi. He's from Zanzibar."

"Wot?" Liptstick got so close Lacey could taste the sour sweetness on her breath. "Bisexual? You hiding a dick in there too?"

By now the friend was backing away, hands up, wanting no part in Lipstick's charade. Lacey knew the taste of a bully's fear.

"Wrong one, asshole. Bye-secks-ual."

"You a Paki loving tranny? Is that it?" Lipstick sneered.

"You better stop," Lacey said. There was something satisfying in the simple threat.

"Or what? Bisexual. Bullshit. You're either with us or against us. No wonder he died. So fucking promiscuous. Good riddance to bad rubbish."

The bar disappeared. The granite in Lacey's chest didn't so much as shatter as simply melt away. What she had imagined as meters-thick solid rock was nothing more than a millimeter thin shell that gave way beneath the lightest touch.

Kitty. Stevie. Gin-Gin. Toad. Paulette. Manil. Freddie.

The names became a chant, faces whirling about, grating along her knuckles, clipping the rims of her ears, the smell of antiseptics and fresh washed sheets clogging up her nostrils.

Infect. Rinse. Repeat.

The granite infected her fists, like she was attempting to build a wall one punch at a time.

Lacey struggled to shake off the infecting hands, but they held tight. Lipstick stood near the stairs, a wall of girls in suits blocking her in. Blue stared the girl down, her words lost beneath the screech of stone on stone in Lacey's head. Lipstick had a hand over her bloodied nose.

The virus is passed through the sharing of infected bodily fluids.

Someone sauntered out of the bathrooms. "Hey Blue. The condom and dam dispensers are empty," they shouted, oblivious to the tense scene.

Flipper's hands relaxed, and she smoothed Lacey's hair with a sigh.

Don't TOUCH me...

"What?" grumbled Blue. "I've refilled them once tonight already."

A figure at the top of the stairs, weak twilight framing curly hair into a halo. When they turned away, a golden point of light shrunk with each step, like a train moving back up a tunnel. Doom moving in reverse.

That's right, little virus, you better run.

Wednesday, November 27, 1991.

Lacey fingered the scratch down the side of her nose.

'Tis nothing. How much of me is left under her fingernails though?

The crowd milled about Logan Place in respectful patterns. Most were sitting, waiting for something, anything. Lacey ran her fingers along the flapping letters tacked up on the fence, catching a word here or there.

I should write something let him know but I can't I can't what are words inadequate how could I compete.

"Hello dear."

Granny Death blocked her way, wrinkled face scrunched up at the outpouring of love and grief.

Lacey hung her head. "I'm sorry you had to see that display last night. It wasn't like me at all."

"You're not sorry, and of course it was you. That was you in that moment, the you you needed to be." Granny Death didn't scold. Blue had done that enough.

"I'm banned from The Belle Jar for a month," Lacey said. "That other chick's banned for life. She's not going to press charges because that was her third strike. Caught her flipping coke in the bathroom. Blue assures me she threw the first bitch slap, but, well, I don't remember. It was pretty tame by all accounts. But I did land a good one on her nose."

"And you're very proud of that."

"First and last, Granny. First and last."

But it felt GOOD. Flick of the wrist, and you're gone baby.

Lacey looked up from her battered sneakers, raised an eyebrow. "You said you have a job for me. Some interview that was, then."

"So you believe I am who I say I am." Granny Death pressed a floral note in amongst the forest of words. Lacey didn't recognize the language.

"No. Yes. I don't know." Lacey sighed and rubbed her eyes, catching the edge of the scratch. She licked blood off her finger. "Everything's...weird. Heavy and light at the same time. I wouldn't be at all surprised if I'm having a dissociative break."

"Yes, it has been a strange few days," Granny Death replied, sounding surprised at being surprised. She pulled the shade of a tree around them and the quiet murmur dampened further.

"What do you want to believe?" Granny continued, taking out a pack of hard mints. Lacey sucked the lolly thoughtfully until the taste stung the back of her nose.

"That Freddie isn't dead," she said, voice as meek as if her mother stood over her.

"It doesn't work like that," Granny said. "We only see them to the edge of the Rift. What becomes of them after? Death doesn't even know."

"You make Death sound like a semi-decent kinda person," Lacey said.

"As far as employers go, they're better than most," Granny said. "It's a service someone has got to do. And the benefits aren't all that bad. Form of your choosing, extended life span—"

"—free lunch."

"You get to know who does the better catering," Granny admitted.

Suddenly her eyebrows lifted.

Expecting a spectral figure in a black robe come to put her blood on the dotted line, Lacey turned to follow her gaze.

Rocko Redpath slinked through the crowd, features set in a brokenness Lacey could never have imagined his rat-like face achieving. He held the hand of a handsome muscle man.

Lacey couldn't move, couldn't breathe.

Rocko was right in front of her.

He flinched, shuffled a little. Muscles said 'You right, love?'

Lacey gave her boss a nod. Rocko nodded back, fumbled in his net shopping bag. A peace offering: a packet of PG Tips.

He melted into the crowd.

"So, I'm beginning to suspect I don't just See things when it comes to Death," Lacey said. "I knew about Rocko, and it wasn't just gaydar. Not sure if I forgive him though."

"You don't have to," Granny said. "Let time do its thing. Life has a way of surprising you."

"Does Life have an admin division too?" Lacey shoved the packet of tea into her backpack, and scrubbed at her face with her palms. Her scratch caught again.

A ripple passed through the crowd. People were returning to the house after the service. Some paparazzi called out, jostling for space.

Fucking paps.

"So, is a benefit one of those eyes in the back of your head?" Lacey asked in an undertone.

Her fingers tingled, and she felt like her body was rushing through a tunnel, rushing through all the spaces in the world at once but the meat of her brain stood stock still, sloshing up against the thin eggshell that held her inside. Asking for release.

Let me out, let me be.

"Dear." Granny patted the air above Lacey's hand. "We have eyes in all sorts of places."

Together, they waited out the rest of vigil in silence. Because silence felt good.

Monday, April 20, 1992.

Lacey paused in her duties of handing out red ribbons, condoms, and dams to watch in wonder as Extreme stormed the Wembley Stadium stage with a hot shit rendition of 'Keep Yourself Alive'. Seventy-two thousand people surged, thundered, cried, and laughed. It was turning out to be a hell of a funeral.

Granny Death popped up beside Lacey, one of her hideous floral scarves tied around her forehead like an aging hippy. It went well with the terrible green polyester flares, sleeveless pastel pink twin set, and pearls.

"How the hell did you get tickets!" Lacey laugh-shouted over the roar of the crowd. "This concert sold out in three hours!"

"I have a little sway here and there." Granny clapped out of time with the music.

"What, Death is a Queen fan?"

"Something like that."

Lacey squinted up into the glary Easter Monday sky. The weather held, actually pleasant for London temperatures, but the haze made it difficult to spot Rifts.

More passers-by dug their hands into Lacey's box of goodies. She'd have to go back for a refill soon.

Just like Blue had to keep refilling the dispensers in the bogs at the Belle Jar. Just like supplies had to topped up at the house. 'No rubber, no loving' had become the slogan whenever someone brought a date home to the Hackney flat. Even Blue had gone to get herself tested.

Clear. Thank the Templace, she's all clear.

Lacey carried her own letter detailing her HIV negative position like a good luck charm in a hidden inner suit jacket pocket.

Granny followed her at a trot as she took a swing through the upper terraces, getting winks and up-nods from the odd king or butch.

"That's nice dear," Granny said, sipping a beer.

"What is?"

"Seeing you smile."

"Ugh, Granny." Lacey rolled her eyes. "Don't be so sloppy."

Freddie, my darling. I miss you so hard gone away gone away.

The chunk of granite in her chest orbited once. Glittering dust sanded off, softening an edge.

Rubbing the hopeful bump on the back of her head, Lacey stared hard into the white hazy sky, forcing her eyes—all of them—to stay dry.

With a gleam like the dust from the fresh edge in her chest, a Rift pondered its way open over the top of stadium.

"Granny, look!" Lacey pointed up. "That's the biggest I've seen yet!"

"Well done!" Granny clapped her hands, bouncing in place. Lacey was sure the old bat would ache like buggery the next day, and she'd be fetching cups of tea and hot water bottles. "Goodness me, that's a pretty one!"

And it was pretty, layers of blue-shot silver with sparkling black on top, the edges curled up like a smile.

Lacey nudged Granny. "He's watching us, I swear!"

"Now you're just being fanciful." Granny danced off into the crowd. Her voice wafted back along with a teaser of lavender perfume. "You know the Rifts are only a one way trip."

The Rift stayed open for the entirety of the concert, the longest Lacey had seen. Every time she looked up at the iridescent void, the Nothing that held Everything, her voice inside quelled to a quiet murmur.

Tomorrow. I'll take my letter down to the fence at Logan Place tomorrow...

"Granny Death and the Drag King of London" is copyright A.J. Fitzwater 2018.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon with a reprint of "Smooth Stones and Empty Bones" by Bennett North.

]]>Episode 49 is part of the Autumn 2017 / Winter 2018 double issue! "Granny Death and the Drag King of London" is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL.
Support ...Episode 49 is part of the Autumn 2017 / Winter 2018 double issue! "Granny Death and the Drag King of London" is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL.

Lacey James had been working for Redpath Catering for three months when Freddie Mercury died.

"Fuck," she mouthed around her fist and bit harder into her numb flesh. The news was hours old, but still her oesophagus made odd wheezy hiccups, and she couldn't swallow past the perpetual lump of granite in her chest. "Fuck fuck fuck."

All going terrible, the weird black sparkles that invaded her vision at a whiff of death would arrive soon, the awful memories of helping nurse Stevie and Toad would nail her, or the creepy old lady that haunted funerals on her catering beat would turn up. Or all at once.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 49 for February 13, 2018. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I last brought you any fiction—to make it up to you, this episode is part of a double issue, which means that there are six originals and six reprints coming your way as quickly as I can get them out for you.

I would also like to officially welcome Nibedita Sen as GlitterShip's official assistant editor. She will be helping out with keeping the Ship running smoothly... and hopefully more on time than it has been in the past.

Today we have a poem and a GlitterShip original for you. The poem is "Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting," by Bogi Takács read by Bogi eirself.

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person currently living in the US as a resident alien. Eir speculative fiction, poetry and nonfiction have been published in a variety of venues like Clarkesworld, Apex, Strange Horizons and podcast on Glittership, among others. You can follow Bogi on Twitter, Instagram and Patreon, or visit eir website at www.prezzey.net. Bogi also recently edited Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2016, for Lethe Press.

Seven Handy Ideas for Algorithmic Shapeshifting

by Bogi Takács

Try it now – guaranteed enjoyment or your money back!

Loss of life not covered under the terms of the user agreement.

The classic original: Shapeshift to a surface color the inverse of your environment [reverse chameleon]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 48 for September 26, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of “Circus Boy Without A Safety Net” by Craig Laurance Gidney. Potential background dog noises are unintended, but provided by Rey, Finn, and Heidi.

Content warning for slurs, homophobic bullying, and descriptions of porn.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 48 for September 26, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of "Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" by Craig Laurance Gidney. Potential background dog noises are unintended, but provided by Rey, Finn, and Heidi.

Content warning for slurs, homophobic bullying, and descriptions of porn.

C.B. went to see The Wiz with his family. The movie was pretty cool, by his standards, even though he thought Diana Ross was a little too old to be playing Dorothy. But the sets were amazing--the recasting of the Emerald City as downtown Manhattan, the Wicked Witch's sweatshop, the trashcan monsters in the subway. The songs sometimes lasted a little too long, but they were offset by Michael Jackson's flashy spin-dancing. But it was the image of Lena Horne as Glinda the Good Witch that would follow him.

She appeared in the next to last scene in a silver dress. Her hair was captured in a net of stars, and she was surrounded by a constellation of babies, all wrapped in clouds, their adorable faces peering out like living chocolate kisses. He fell in love. Ms. Horne was undeniably beautiful, with her creamy, golden skin, and mellow, birdlike features. Her movements during the song "Home" were passionate. They were at odds with shimmering, ethereal-blur in which she was filmed. Indeed, she could not be of this earth. In all of his life in Willow Creek, NC, C.B. had not seen anything like this before.

He was in love, all right. He researched her in libraries, finding old issues of Ebony and Jet; he watched old movies that she'd appeared in, like Cabin in the Sky. He collected some of her records; his 8-track of "Stormy Weather" was so worn, he had to buy another copy.

But in the weeks afterwards, he began to sense that this love of his wasn't quite right. His brother and his father would tease him about his "girlfriend," who was 70 years old, and about how, when he came of an age to marry, she would be even older than that. Of how he could never have children. His brother was particularly mean: he imagined a wedding, held at Lena's hospital bed, with her in an iron lung, exhaling an "I Do" as ominous as Darth Vader's last breath. But C.B. wanted to explain that it wasn't like that at all. He couldn't quite put it into words.

Lena wasn't an object of desire, someone who he wanted to kiss or hold hands with. She was something more. She was a goddess of Beauty, an ideal. She was something beyond anything he'd ever known. She hovered above Willow Creek, an angel, looking down on its box houses that were the color of orange sherbet, lemonade, and his own robin's-egg-blue house. She wasn't someone to sleep with; she was someone to be like.

C.B. made a bedroom shrine to his goddess. Old pictures of her, protected in cellophane, marched up his wall. But the ultimate treasure lay unseen. In the unused chest of drawers in the back of his closet, he hid a Barbie doll, bought at a flea market and transformed into her likeness: painted skin, eyes blackened with a pen, stolen hair dye darkening the blond tresses. And he sprinkled lots of glitter on her dress, so it would be silver, like hers was in The Wiz. (This had involved experiments with several doll's dresses. There was a measure of discretion; he came up with a story about how his sick sister collected Barbie dresses, so that the store clerks wouldn't think he was strange. He ended up dunking a powder-blue dress in Elmer's glue, and dredging it in silver glitter. He learned it by imitating his mother, when she made fried chicken: first the eggwash, then the seasoned flour).

But buried treasure sends out signals. Especially to mothers.

She zeroed in on the spot. Oh, there was some excuse about her wanting to check out the chest, so that she could sell it at the church bazaar. Lena was exposed. His mother and father met him at the kitchen table one day after school, holding his creation in their hands. When C.B. saw them, looking as solemn as they did when they watched reruns of King's historic speech, he knew something was wrong. He thought he was going to get a lecture on idolatry. Instead, he was told, in the calmest tones they could muster, that he was not to play with dolls ever again. That was that. His mother stood up, and started making dinner. His father left the room, his head hung in shame.

C.B. felt strange. They were treating him as if he were diseased. As if they'd discovered that he was freak of some kind. ("When your child reaches the age of twelve, his eyes will grow to the size of grapefruits..."). It was his brother that laid it out for him. He'd been listening in on the conversation.

"They think you're a faggot."

When he got to his room, the walls had been stripped. Everything of Lena was gone. The walls looked like he felt: exposed.

He didn't eat dinner that night. They didn't call him to the table.

He popped an 8-track of The Wiz into the player, and put the giant earmuff headphones on. Lena sang softly: "If you believe in yourself..."

C.B. snatched the tape out of the player. He unspooled the brown ribbon, until it lay in curls on the floor around him.

#

C.B. had a Voice. That's what everybody at the church choir said. He felt it, too. His chest would fill with warmth, the spirit of sound. And when he opened his mouth, all of that warm feeling would come sliding out, like a stream of maple syrup, rich and sweet. It would circle over the church. He could feel it soaring like an angel, over Willow Creek, notes raining down on the box houses the colors of mint-green, bubblegum pink, and pastel violet.

He convinced himself that he was singing to God. All of the ladies with their wiry hats would come up to tell him what a wonderful gift he had. For a while, he gained the pride and trust of his parents. Sort of. At least of his mother.

His father grudgingly gave him respect for his voice; but his father must've known that singing didn't really undo all of embarrassment he'd caused when he failed at various sports. Having a musician son was a poor substitute for having a normal one; but it would have to do.

Within the tiny whitewashed church, he was safe from the worst of himself. The Devil—or Lena—was imprisoned, locked away. Her smoky vocals couldn't slip in between the glorious notes of hymns. Her fabulous gowns were safely replaced by neutral choir robes.

He jumped through a hoop, pleasing the Lord. C.B. thought of God as a great ringmaster, and Heaven as a circus-dream of angels and tamed beasts. The dead could trapeze through the stars, and see the little marble that was Earth below. But first, you had prove yourself worthy. Jump through this hoop, ringed with razors. Now through this circle of fire... C.B. knew that his life would be a dazzling and dangerous tightrope performance from now on. One slip and he'd fall into a Hell of naked boys and show-tunes. The church was his safety net.

Another bonus of singing was the admiration of the congregation.

C.B. was an average student. He struggled through math and science, tolerated history and English. He didn't have any friends. Regular kids tended to avoid religious kids. Since that was his disguise, he was a loner. He avoided the actually religious kids himself—he felt that if anyone could see through his charade, they could. They would sniff it out like bloodhounds. Everyone was at a safe distance. And the holiest of music surrounded him like a shield.

He felt the most secure, when the Devil heard him sing.

He came in the form of the music and drama teacher, Mr. P. Mr. P traipsed into town in loud colors. He wore banana yellow jackets, pink shirts, and bow ties as large and comical as a clown's. In a way, he matched the colors of Willow Creek's houses. His skin was dark and smooth, like a Special Dark candy bar. He had large glasses that magnified his sad-clown brown eyes. And his hair was a mass of wild and wet Jericurls. His lisp reminded C.B of Snagglepuss, the cartoon lion. Like Snagglepuss, Mr. P was prissy and aristocratic, given to fey and archaic phrases.

Word got around school that C.B. could sing. He'd fastidiously avoided anything to do with the drama and music department. First of all, he reasoned, they played secular music. He sang for the glory of the Almighty. But the real reason was Mr. P. A whiff of his spicy cologne in the crowded school hall made him cringe; Mr. P's loud, theatrical laugh when he was a lunch hall monitor could set his teeth gnashing.

It was around January when he was approached. He left the lunchroom, walking right by Mr. P. (who wore a suit of lime-green, with an electric blue bow tie), when he was stopped.

Mr. P. spoke his name.

"Yes, sir?"

"I heard that you can sing, child. How come you haven't been around the chorus?"

"I... I guess that I've been too busy. With school. And church." He invested the last word with an emphasis he hoped wasn't lost on Mr. P.

But Mr. P flounced right by the Meaning, with a pass-me-my-smelling-salts flick of his wrists. "Nonsense. I would just love to hear you sing. Can you stop by the music room sometime this week?"

"No, sir. My course load is pretty full..."

"Any study halls?" (His sss's grated on him).

"Not this semester," C.B. lied.

"How bout after school? Just 15 minutes or so."

"Uh, this week's not too good, cause I, uh, have to help my dad with some chores."

Mr. P smiled, revealing gums as pink as deviled ham. He touched C.B. on the shoulder.

When he left the cafeteria, the nutmeg smell of the cologne tickled his nose. It wouldn't leave him all day.

That Sunday he was to sing a solo section of the hymn, "His Eye is on the Sparrow" during the distribution of the Host. Before he walked out on stage with the rest of the choir, he did a customary scan of the audience. Mr. P was there, in the pew behind his mother. His heart leapt into throat. But then, of course Mr. P would show up. The Devil can't resist stirring up souls in turmoil.

In the church basement, over fizzy punch and stale cookies, Mr. P lavished praise over C.B.'s voice, how pure it was. His mother was beaming beside him.

"Why, Mrs. Bertram—"

"Imogene, please."

"Imogene, when I heard that he had a Voice, I just had to investigate. It exceeded my wildest expectations."

"I can't act," C. B. interrupted. He could see where this going; he had to cut it at the source.

"You don't have to act," (darling, he heard Mr. P add subliminally) "you just have to perform. And you've got that down pat." (Honeychile).

His mother pestered him into trying out for the spring musical, which was The Music Man. C.B. had enjoyed the movie, and found that he couldn't resist the temptation. It was too much. He felt Lena stirring in him. She whispered in his sleep. One night she came to him. She wore her sparkling fairy queen dress. Her chocolate star babies were grinning behind her. The only thing different about her this time was that she was in black-and-white. She'd occasionally ripple and sputter out of existence, like an image on an old television set. He took this as her blessing.

I won't give up going to church, so I'll be safe.

He landed the role of Professor Harold Hill.

The play ran four nights and a Saturday matinee. It was a success. The last performance earned him a standing ovation.

But in the back of his mind, there was always the issue of Mr. P. The jocks and class clowns of the school would always be whispering about him. They called him the Black Liberace. "Hand me the candelabra," they'd say when he passed them in the hall, or "I wish my brother George was here," in mincing voices. C.B. felt himself slipping. Movie posters of West Side Story, The Fantasticks, and The Sound of Music competed with the camouflage of his mother's hand-stitched prayer samplers and collected Willow Creek football bulletins.

The worst was gym class. He refused to take showers. But that didn't stop the boys from making fun of him. As they emerged glistening and nude from the showers, they would faux caress and grasp one another.

"Yeah baby, push it in harder!"

"Stab that shit, sweetie."

"Oh daddy, be my butt-pirate tonight."

He knew they were directed at him.

Summer came, and C.B. immersed himself in church activities. He became an aide for the church-sponsored camp for kids. He sang every Sunday, declining solo parts. It was a sacrifice that God might notice.

For the fall assembly, Mr. P put together a show comprised of songs from musicals. C.B. sang lead for "New York, New York," and "Send in the Clowns." He bought the house down. Basking in the light of adulation, he was mindful of the rot that hid behind and beneath Willow Creek's façade of cheerful acceptance: a hate that corroded the aluminum siding covered in pastel icing.

C.B. told Mr. P he'd consider it. That night, Lena and her entourage appeared before him. And he was Icarus, tempted by her beauty. If he flew too high, she would supernova, and scorch his soul as black as the void surrounding her cherubs. He was a tightrope walker, and Lena was the spirit who watched over him, waiting to push him off, waiting for him to fall.

He could not ignore the sign that God had sent him. This was temptation.

He declined Mr. P's offer, claiming that he had to focus on his grades that semester, if he was to go to college.

C.B. did the right thing. But there was no sense of liberation.

Danger lurked, a phantom image just behind his eyes when he slept at night. He imagined Glinda turning into the Witch, snarling in frustration.

#

Manhattan spread out before him, glitzy, dirty, and labyrinthine. The architecture was as alien to C.B. as the Emerald City was to Dorothy. He was thrilled and terrified at the same time. There was no warmth, no open spaces like there was in Willow Creek. The buildings were naked and thin, and met the challenges of gravity head-on. The houses of Willow Creek were humble—modestly clothed in cheerful fabrics. C.B. wasn't so sure that he liked it. The crowds, the hurried pace, and the anorexic qualities of the landscape rejected him. The unending gray color oppressed him.

The Willow Creek Community College glee club had performed in a drab little church just outside of Harlem. C.B. swore he could hear rats skittering around the eaves. The nasty hotel the glee club stayed in had water stains on the ceiling, and the beds were hard and tiny. There had been a drunk sleeping in one of the chairs in the hotel lobby, his overripe smell and loud snoring filling the space. The hotel staff didn't seem to care.

Still, it had to be done. He had to test himself, to see once and for all if the Devil still lived in him. New York City was the perfect place to "experiment" without anyone knowing.

The first step was to ride the subway to Greenwich Village. He moved to the smelly hole in the ground. Its mouth was wide and yellow. He remembered the monsters in the subway in The Wiz. Trash cans with gnashing teeth, pillars that detached themselves from the ceiling and chased people around. What he found was a whole less interesting. The concrete floor in the subway was dirty, covered with gray lumps of long-forgotten chewing gum. He glanced down one of the platform tracks. Fearless brown and gray rats scuttled, each holding some treasure in their claws—a crust of Wonderbread, a squashed pink jellybean. C.B.'s skin crawled.

His train howled up to the platform, and the breaks squealed to a halt. He entered a drably lit car, with sour-faced people crushed next to him. He took a seat next to a blind man. The door clapped shut. His rattling trip began.

About three stops later, two men entered the subway together. Both of them wore black leather jackets, and had long beards, like ZZ Top. One man wore a tight leather cap on his head, while the other had chaps encasing his pants. When he turned away from C.B., he could see the two pockets of his ripped Levi's spread out like countries on the globe of his butt.

C.B. felt excitement wash over him. He allowed himself this one night. He had to know what he was giving up for the Lord. He stepped off the tightrope and tumbled into space.

Christopher Street was his stop. C.B. spilled out of the train and into the warm spring night. The first thing he noticed was that the Village wasn't as crowded and squashed together as downtown. There were no tall buildings. The sidewalks were thronged with people. Men, dressed like GQ models prowled the street. C.B. looked down. He made a decision; and looked up again. I'm tumbling.

He felt vertigo.

Cafes and bakeries spun past him. C.B. wandered into a bookstore. The atmosphere was thick with tension in here. Heads hunched over pornographic magazines glanced up then turned back to pictures of naked men spread-eagled and airbrushed on glossy pages. C.B. cautiously crept up to the magazine stand. He picked up a magazine, called Carnival of Men. He began trembling (tumbling).

The model's face was vacant. His body glistened and reflected the studio lights. His genitalia were objects: huge, flesh-colored fruits. Hairless and smooth. C.B. flipped the pages of the magazines. He found another picture, where a model spread the cheeks of his buttocks wide open. In the valley he created, he revealed the puckered rosebud of his anus.

If C.B. had been white, he would have been flushed as pink as Snagglepuss.

This is what it felt like, to give into temptation. What his mother hoped to destroy with church, what his father wanted to suppress with sports. The ground of Hell was fast approaching; it seethed with naked men and serpents. C.B. stayed in the bookstore, looking at magazines, for at least an hour. He was tempted to buy one of the magazines—this might be the only chance he got for a long time. But, then there was the chance of discovery, like his shrine to Lena. And it would be a visible souvenir of his shame.

He left the store empty-handed. The sky above the street was the sludge of sepia and purple-black, with the stars erased. There was a hint of humidity in the air.

He wandered the streets for an hour or more, putting off his eventual goal. He saw sophisticated men and women dressed in black. There were people with hair in colors of mint-green, daffodil yellow, and bubblegum pink. They wore safety pins through their ears, and some of them had white makeup on their faces, and tattoos on their arms. They were the clowns of hell. C.B. tried walking by them without gawking. He saw a shop that sold sex toys. He was too chicken to go in, so he looked through the windows, staring at the various tools and instruments of pleasure.

Finally, C.B. steeled himself. A couple of blocks from the Christopher Street stop he'd exited, there was a bar where men swarmed like bees. The name of the bar was the Big Top. He took a deep breath, stepped inside.

It was dark and crowded. Men perched on stools, sipping drinks, or clung to walls, gripping the nozzles of their beers. It was the sort of aggressive, ridiculous stance that the boys in the locker room mimicked. Others prowled the spaces between in cutoffs and T-shirts, leaving trails of perfume behind. The walls of the bar were paneled with some dark wood and wainscoted in a thick, red vinyl with large buttons on it, like the inside of a coffin.

Willow Creek was a dry county, and his mother didn't drink. His father did, but C.B. had little experience with alcohol. He went up to the bar, and asked for a rum and coke. The bartender wore an open vest. His chest was as smooth and built as those in the magazine C.B. had seen earlier. The bartender nodded sullenly, and gave him a full glass of rum, and colored it lightly with the soft drink.

C.B. looked at the drink doubtfully. He tipped the bartender, and wandered to the second room, which lay behind a black curtain.

He passed through, expecting a backroom, like he'd heard about. Darkness, smells of sweaty close bodies, groping hands. Instead, he slipped into wonder.

The room was decorated like his circus dream of Heaven. The walls were covered with paintings of elegant Harlequins and court jesters, their faces regal and dignified, not silly or sinister. One of the painted jesters wore a checkered garment of green and pink, and on the points of three-pronged hat were pansies, instead of the customary bells. There was a small stage at the end of the room. A circus dome capped the room, so you couldn't see the ceiling. A silver balloon rose from the back of each chair.

A man in a tuxedo walked to the microphone set up in the center of the stage. He waved C.B. to a table. When he'd taken a seat, the MC spoke:

"Tonight at the Big Top, we are proud to present the vocal stylings of the beautiful Lena Flügelhorn!"

The lights dimmed to spectral blue as a figure made her way to the microphone. She wore a dress of stars, her hair pinned up in some gravity-defying coiffure. A single white spotlight pierced the stage. The golden skin was a miracle of foundation. The likeness was uncanny, save for a huge Adam's apple. An invisible piano started the familiar chords to "Home."

And C.B. tumbled, plummeting to the floor of Hell. But the voice—resolutely male and tenor, yet somehow imbued with the essence of Lena—came and blew his poor body upwards, towards the star-babies of Heaven. C.B. found himself singing.

As he fell (or rose), C.B. felt Lena swell with him in. She rose up and held his hand. Lucifer—or Lena was there for him, as God had never been. If this was Hell, it couldn't be all that bad. It was beautiful here. A celestial circus of fallen stars. At once, C.B. recognized the anemic heaven he strove for, and rejected it.

Lena Flügelhorn's song ended, and with it, a chapter of C.B.'s life.

END

"Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" was originally published in Spoonfed and is copyright Craig Laurance Gidney 2001.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with the first original story from the Autumn 2017 issue.

]]>
Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 48 for September 26, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with ...

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 48 for September 26, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of "Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" by Craig Laurance Gidney. Potential background dog noises are unintended, but provided by Rey, Finn, and Heidi.

Content warning for slurs, homophobic bullying, and descriptions of porn.

C.B. went to see The Wiz with his family. The movie was pretty cool, by his standards, even though he thought Diana Ross was a little too old to be playing Dorothy. But the sets were amazing--the recasting of the Emerald City as downtown Manhattan, the Wicked Witch's sweatshop, the trashcan monsters in the subway. The songs sometimes lasted a little too long, but they were offset by Michael Jackson's flashy spin-dancing. But it was the image of Lena Horne as Glinda the Good Witch that would follow him.

She appeared in the next to last scene in a silver dress. Her hair was captured in a net of stars, and she was surrounded by a constellation of babies, all wrapped in clouds, their adorable faces peering out like living chocolate kisses. He fell in love. Ms. Horne was undeniably beautiful, with her creamy, golden skin, and mellow, birdlike features. Her movements during the song "Home" were passionate. They were at odds with shimmering, ethereal-blur in which she was filmed. Indeed, she could not be of this earth. In all of his life in Willow Creek, NC, C.B. had not seen anything like this before.

He was in love, all right. He researched her in libraries, finding old issues of Ebony and Jet; he watched old movies that she'd appeared in, like Cabin in the Sky. He collected some of her records; his 8-track of "Stormy Weather" was so worn, he had to buy another copy.

But in the weeks afterwards, he began to sense that this love of his wasn't quite right. His brother and his father would tease him about his "girlfriend," who was 70 years old, and about how, when he came of an age to marry, she would be even older than that. Of how he could never have children. His brother was particularly mean: he imagined a wedding, held at Lena's hospital bed, with her in an iron lung, exhaling an "I Do" as ominous as Darth Vader's last breath. But C.B. wanted to explain that it wasn't like that at all. He couldn't quite put it into words.

Lena wasn't an object of desire, someone who he wanted to kiss or hold hands with. She was something more. She was a goddess of Beauty, an ideal. She was something beyond anything he'd ever known. She hovered above Willow Creek, an angel, looking down on its box houses that were the color of orange sherbet, lemonade, and his own robin's-egg-blue house. She wasn't someone to sleep with; she was someone to be like.

C.B. made a bedroom shrine to his goddess. Old pictures of her, protected in cellophane, marched up his wall. But the ultimate treasure lay unseen. In the unused chest of drawers in the back of his closet, he hid a Barbie doll, bought at a flea market and transformed into her likeness: painted skin, eyes blackened with a pen, stolen hair dye darkening the blond tresses. And he spr]]>

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 47 for September 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a poem by Jes Rausch, “Defining the Shapes of our Selves,” and a GlitterShip original, “The Last Spell of the Raven” by Morris Tanafon. This is the last original story from GlitterShip Summer 2017, which you can pick up at glittership.com/buy if you would like to have your own copy. More importantly, however, this means that the Autumn 2017 issue is coming out soon!

Jes Rausch lives and writes in Wisconsin, with too many pets and too much beer for company. Nir fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Lethe Press. Find nem not updating nir Twitter @jesrausch.

“Defining the Shapes of our Selves”

by Jes Rausch

[...]]]>

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 47 for September 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a poem by Jes Rausch, "Defining the Shapes of our Selves," and a GlitterShip original, "The Last Spell of the Raven" by Morris Tanafon. This is the last original story from GlitterShip Summer 2017, which you can pick up at glittership.com/buy if you would like to have your own copy. More importantly, however, this means that the Autumn 2017 issue is coming out soon!

Jes Rausch lives and writes in Wisconsin, with too many pets and too much beer for company. Nir fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Lethe Press. Find nem not updating nir Twitter @jesrausch.

"Defining the Shapes of our Selves"

by Jes Rausch

Book One

when we reached Fire Nest on Summit, hot sun hanging low in the sky like an egg, biding, the dirt streets were dusty as smoke. So this is what the capitol of the Dragon Lands is like, i said, and, i never dreamt i’d be here, breathe in dust that must once have been the scales of ancients. There, you said, and pointed out a spire among spires, the twisting of another sculpted tail in a sea of swirling tails and horns and There, you said, and interrupted my awe with one of your smiles, man to me. When we reached Fire Nest on Summit, our pouches full of rubies, the aura of crime marinating them to a fine delicacy, we strode down streets dusty with smoke, smoky with the scent of food and sounds and flashes of golds and crimsons. We were here for a reason, a purpose, a journey, and here we were at the door carved of real dragon bone before the set of scale-clad guards, to bargain and banter and barter our way into the deal of a lifetime. Said the guard who stepped forward, He requires men and women meet specific challenges attuned to their natures to pass, and Step this way, to you. When we reached Fire Nest on Summit, you walked through your designated door, and i left behind in your dust, was told to wait when the guard could not determine which frame fit. Said the guard, it is better this way, after all, you cannot meet the challenges without a reason, a purpose, a journey.

Book Two

When I stepped into the apartment I heard the burble of the fish tank, that constant watery murmur that gives me what little comfort it can. I turn on all the lights today, and a little music too. The curtains already drawn, this little home a sanctuary where I can pee however I want to, and with the door open. Out there in the world deemed real, I can try too hard to talk with coworkers, meet company standards, go by unseen. But here I can make chicken tikka. Chicken tikka doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care if you live or die either, so in a way, it is the world deemed real, and here, in my home I can devour it.

Book Three

when we slid into Io Port 7 dock, powered down, cleared the security scans, and disembarked after five long hours of waiting around in the mess, prisoners in our own ship, i was ready for a bit of fun. Ten months out in a vacuum will do that to you. Chasing odd jobs around stars, snagging a get-rich-quick scheme out of orbit is a tiring way to live. Dull as an old hull, random as a time of death. Our boots made the obligatory clank- clank noise down the corridors, our voices blocked them out. See, i was never free ‘til i reached for a star and grabbed a bucket of rust, made the engines run on sweat and blood and nightmares. See, you can smell the aching shell of it from the inside, but then, you probably never will. i take care choosing a crew who can withstand the raw scent of a being rotting from the inside out, fighting against the lack of friction for all days. When we emerged from the decaying ship, pristine outer hull, and slid ourselves into Io Port 7 dock and down and down the corridors already the rest and relaxation curled its way up to us. Somewhere in the center of port, a band was playing, Venus Colony 3- inspired beats pulsing and ebbing through the artificial grav. Some persistent restaurant owner was preparing dishes from Old Earth, warm smells competing for dominance with the aromas of Orion-inspired cuisine. When we descended into Io Port 7 dock, followed the sounds and smells down to get our access passes from the automated entrance bot, i entered in my name, retinal scan, handprint, voice sample. i completed the three-part questionnaire: reason for visit, profession, personal information. i turned to accept my pass scan, and the bot flashed dismissal. I’m sorry, the cold voice said, but you don’t have the appropriate body mods to legally be permitted to select that gender. I count only two of the required five.

END

Morris Tanafon lives in Ohio but still feels like a New Englander. His work has appeared in Crossed Genres and Mythic Delirium and he blogs sporadically at https://gloriousmonsters.wordpress.com

The Last Spell of the Raven

by Morris Tanafon

When I was very young, I watched my mother win the Battle of Griefswald. Standing knee-deep in our ornamental pool, she transformed the surface into a picture of Germany, and dripped fire from her hands into the water. I stood with my tutor in the crowd that watched, and did not understand why she gripped my shoulders until they ached, or why the people watching cheered and gasped. I saw the fire snake around the houses, and tiny people running from it. But until I was older I did not understand that it had been real.

Nobody talked to me about magic. My father never spoke of it, and my mother believed that I took after my father and had no talent for it. Still, at the age of seven I used it for the first time—a desperate child will reach for any tool. I knew that magic existed, from my mother’s conversations with her friends, and that it could be used to do wonderful things. And I knew that my cat Morrow was dead. So when I was given the body to bury it, I took her out to the backyard instead, and performed my best guess at a spell. The form was foolish, but the intent genuine, and intent was all it needed.

Morrow stirred, and my cry of delight caught my mother's attention. She looked from me to the cat, heard five seconds of my babbled explanation, and began screaming.

"Galen, you idiot!" She slapped me. "Things that come back are barely alive, and now you've wasted a spell! If you use more than four spells you die, do you want to die?"

I began screaming, convinced I was going to drop dead on the spot, and the reborn Morrow added a thin, ugly caterwaul to the din.

It was my father who ended the stupid affair, in one of the rare moments he left his study. He scooped up Morrow, plucked me away from my mother, and took us both inside, ignoring my mother's spitting rage. I don't know what she did after that. It didn't matter to me at the time, because my father took me into his study. I had never seen the interior before, and when he put me down I froze in place, afraid I’d break something. He dropped Morrow in my arms; I could feel her tiny, tinny heartbeat against her ribs. She smelled like mothballs and felt like paper-mâché, as if I hugged too tightly I'd crush her.

"I have no say in the matter," my father said, "but I suggest you never use magic again."

I must have looked ready to start screaming again, because he began speaking quickly—something he never did.

"I would never have married Evelyn if I knew she was a magician. In the country I come from, it is despised, for good reason. Who would willingly rip their soul apart?" He sat down, drumming his fingers, and watched me for a minute. I stared back dumbly—I still didn't understand.

"There's a story we tell children," he said. "Once, a raven was swallowed by a whale, and inside it he found a little house. There was a beautiful girl there, with a lamp by her side."

Morrow scratched my shoulder. I put her down but she stayed by my legs, winding around them.

"She told the raven: The lamp is sacred, do not touch it. But every few moments she had to rise and go out the door, for she was the whale's breath." I wanted to ask why the whale's breath was a girl, but my father signaled me to be silent. "And the raven, being arrogant and curious, waited until she was gone and touched the lamp. In an instant it went out, the girl fell down dead, and the whale died too, for the lamp was the whale's soul."

I pressed my hands to my chest.

"You're not going to die," my father said. "Not if you stop now. But listen—the raven dug its way up through the whale's dead flesh, and found it beached. There were men gathered around. And instead of telling them, 'I meddled with something beautiful and destroyed it', the raven merely cried, 'I slew the whale! I slew the whale!' And he became great among men, but lived a cursed life thenceforward."

The meaning was not obvious to a seven-year-old. "Am I cursed?"

"All magicians are," my father said flatly, "for that raven, greedy for the power he tasted from the whale's soul, became the first magician. Now go, and think about what I told you."

I went, and I did. To this day, that's the longest conversation my father shared with me.

Morrow perished again seven years later, despite my best efforts. I fed her bugs and graveyard dirt and tiny pieces of liver and locked her in my room to prevent her from jumping off a too-high surface and crushing her fragile front legs. But I forgot to lock the door one day, and a maid wildly kicked at the grey shape that appeared in front of her, and that was the end of Morrow.

I was angry, but the maid cried and helped me gather up the pieces, and she was very pretty. That, at fourteen, had begun to matter, and I forgave her enough to give her part in the burial service.

My mother watched from the window until Morrow was well buried.

When I wove my second spell I knew what I was giving up, and I knew my mother would kill me if she discovered what I’d done. I was to go to university that autumn, and become certified as a magician in service to the Crown, as my mother was—I risked that as well. I thought the price cheap in exchange for a smile from Asuka.

Fujimoto Asuka, the ambassador's daughter. We attended the same parties, hated them with the same passion, and exchanged weary looks over the rims of our wineglasses until I finally got up the courage to speak to her. She had come with her father to England to find a magician to change her body's shape. She was born with one wrong for her. We were a good match for that summer—she appreciated my adoring glances and felt kindly toward magicians. I was glad of admiration from one as worldly as her.

On the last day of summer, I convinced Asuka to slip away during a party. She didn't take much convincing, and it's a miracle we weren't caught—giggling like schoolchildren and exchanging significant glances anyone could read. Perhaps the other guests were humoring us. We went to the nearby lake, so well-tended it was our ornamental pool writ large, and I took off my shoes.

"You asked me how magicians first came to be," I said. "Nobody knows the full history, but I can tell you one story."

The pictures I made in the water were not real, but they looked it. Even now, with my regrets, I feel a twinge of pride thinking of the spectacle. I'd studied ravens for months, memorizing how they moved, and drew inspiration for the woman from Asuka; and like any good storyteller, I lied, adding my own spin. I transformed the raven into a man in the last moments and sent him and the whale's breath, hand-in-hand, into the crowd of gaping humans. Their descendants were magicians, I told Asuka. The raven saved the breath-girl at the last moment by lighting the lantern with a piece of his own soul.

When I was done, Asuka's eyes glittered with tears.

She promised to write to me; but the autumn was cold and long and the mail services from Japan to England not too reliable, and after a few exchanges our talk petered out.

I expected my parents to find out about it, but they never did. Instead, I had to explain to the records officer at Iffley College. Anyone who wished to register as a magician had to give an account of all magic they had used. She made notes as I spoke, and squinted at me as if she could see magic filling me to a certain point like a cup.

“From the sound of it,” she said, “you have three spells left. That’s the minimum for a certified magician—you have to give two spells in service, and one left over to keep you alive. You’d have to get through university without using any magic.”

That should have been my cue to turn away from the path of a magician, but I was stubborn and scared. I was not particularly good with mathematics, writing, speaking, or any other useful trait, and I feared my father might not leave me much when he passed away. Magic, no matter how I'd misused it, was the one thing I was certain I could do. I resolved to hoard my last three spells until graduation.

Iffley should have been the site of my third spell.

It was reasonably progressive, so male students were allowed in female student's rooms if the door remained open—as if, Amel said, girls and girls and boys and boys got up to no trouble together.

Amel Duchamps was my best friend, and one of my only friends at Iffley. Most of the magicians there had more spells to their name than I, and loved to talk about what they planned to do with their two 'extras' after the service to the Crown was given; most of the non-magician boys thought me strange and shy. Girls suspected that I only wanted to speak to them for amorous reasons, which was far from the truth—after Asuka, my heart was too raw for romance. I wanted friendship.

Amel provided that and more. She was not a magician, but she did not fear them-—or anything. When she was ten, a horse had gone wild and crushed her legs. The doctor had asked her: would you rather leave them dangling, or cut them away? Amel chose to have them cut, and she told me that all her fear was cut away with them. She had gone about taking dares after that, everything from eating bees to sticking her hand into stinging nettles, and at fifteen she volunteered for experimental mechanical legs.

They were beautiful, wide white-and-bronze things with gears winking through the joints. The ones being produced now, mostly for military veterans, are more workmanlike; but the woman who designed Amel's wanted to make her fifteen-year-old test subject smile, so she had boots painted on the feet and winding vines on the calves.

"Imagine if magic took a piece of your body, instead of your soul," Amel said to me the day we met. "Then I'd be the one who'd spent two spells. I imagine the first would take your legs up to the knees, the next would go to the hips, then your torso... and finally you'd just be a head, rolling along. Fancy that!"

She was a year older than me, but never seemed to notice. We loved each other absolutely in the way of friends, with never a hint of lust; and we both loved the boy in the room across from me with every bit of romance and lust in us, although we never dared reveal that to him. His name was Isaac; he was blind and he had the most beautiful voice I had ever heard.

"How's himself?" Amel would always ask when I came to see her, and I'd tell her what Isaac had done lately. Then we'd move on to food, magic, sympathy over the cross of races we both were—English and Inuit for me, French and African for her. Iffley was a hard school, and the deeper into our education we got the more time we spent simply talking and the more our performance faltered. I might have failed altogether and been forced back home had—had the event not occurred.

I know very little about the attacker; only that he was a magician, and had decided how to spend each and every one of his spells. The newspapers, of course, spent weeks on the matter, on the carnage from beginning to end and the inspiration for it and the attacker's history and potential madness, but I don't want to know another thing about him. I know all I need to: the third dark, wet January I was at Iffley, I had gone out into the town for a much-needed drink and was returning in the afternoon when I heard the screams. I saw the blood, splattered in haphazard patterns over the wall, like wet lace slapped against the bricks. And for one minute I saw him, the killer, in the doorway across from me. He was bright-eyed with excitement, his hands curled up near his chest as if he had been physically tearing away pieces of his soul to do this with; and he looked at me. For a moment, I saw him consider.

But, as I was to learn later, he was on his last spell, and I was just one man. Why waste your power on one man when you can run to another room and kill a crowd? He turned away from me. And I, freezing as if I were seven years old again, let him.

Someone will stop him, any moment now, I thought. Some other magician, one of the ones with all five spells. They can spare it.

A minute later he cast his last spell and fell dead. A magician in the room even managed to deflect part of it. But that last spell still claimed lives—one teacher, one bystander who had been forced into the college, four students. Amel Duchamps.

I threw myself into my work in an attempt to forget, but it didn't help. Amel should have been the magician, I thought over and over. She had given up her legs in an instant. She would have given up a piece of her soul.

But what could I do now? I graduated Iffley College and the Crown claimed me. The last scraps of my soul no longer belonged to me.

My third spell is not worth remarking on. It was a military operation, one part of a massive whole. Performing it, I felt the pain of separating soul from soul for the first time, and I wondered if the pain came with age or only with reluctance.

At thirty I spent my fourth spell in a moment's decision. I had another purpose, another spell laid out for me, although I can no longer recall what it was. Suffice to say I was accompanying a group of soldiers, police and other magicians, retrieving hostages that had been taken from the Royal Opera to the house of an art-obsessed crime lord in Liverpool.

I found Isaac among those rescued. I got up the nerve to greet him, but he only tilted his head. Then he opened his mouth and showed me that the criminal devil had taken his tongue.

I did not think about it, or even tell him what I was going to do, which in hindsight I should have. I kissed him lightly, passing the last easily taken scrap of my soul mouth to mouth, and restored his tongue. "It's the least I can do,” I said.

My superiors raged. My mother heard of it and sent a letter to tell me how stupid I was. Isaac embraced me, which was the high point of the whole affair. But I realized that I could not hear his voice without remembering Amel, and how much she had loved him as well, and so I could not be with him long. When I received orders of discharge I bid him farewell and good luck, and set off wandering.

I found work as a teacher, here and there, although what people most wanted me to do was give lectures on how greatly I had wasted my magic—provide an example to the younger generation of magicians by accepting responsibility for my foolishness. That I could not do, and sooner or later I had to move on from a place when the attention grew to be too much.

My life was lonely. But it warmed me a little to think of a piece of my soul clinging to Isaac, like a flower-petal on the back of his tongue, reverberating with the sound every time he sang.

In the summer of my thirty-sixth year, my mother died and the aggression between England and Germany flared into war once again. Newspapers made poetry of it, suggesting that Germany was given courage to attack by my mother's death. They ran photographs of the Battle of Griefswald, the side that had taken place in my old home's ornamental pool, and some reporters tried to interview me on the matter. With mourning as my excuse, I returned to my old home and locked myself in. My father had gone back to his land of birth, and wanted nothing to do with the house or me.

In time, interest died out. The war occupied everyone's attention. Sides were taken, attacks were made, and after a while I stopped bothering to read the newspapers. With a place to live and the money my mother left behind, I no longer had to go anywhere, and as the days passed I wanted to less and less. People only spoke of magic when they spoke of how it might be used in the war. I was despised, quietly, for my lack of contribution. I came to see the few kindnesses I was still shown as undeserved, and I retreated into my home completely, stocking up on food so I wouldn't need to leave for a long time.

A few people still found me. Young men and women going off to war passed through my part of the country, and some of them stopped at my door. I didn't understand why; finally, I allowed a girl named Katherine inside just to see what she wanted, and over a cup of weak coffee she blurted out that she only had three spells left.

I realized that she wanted to tell me about the first two.

That was what they all wanted, really, the people who knocked at my door. Some had three spells left, some two, but all of them had spent the first on impulse. Katherine had cursed her stepfather's vineyards. A boy called Natanael had resurrected his favorite apple tree after it had been struck by lightning. Gita had brought a patch of earth to life, and it followed her around. "It used to be bigger," she said, looking down at the muddy little golem. "I think someday it will wash away completely."

All I could do was listen, but I realized that was all they wanted.

Eventually they stopped coming. Germany was inching across England's shore near my home, and people fled the area. I stayed deep within my house, and it might have been mistaken for empty; certainly, nobody came to evacuate me. I lived in a looming house over a ghost town, with the sounds of warfare drawing nearer every day, and I could not bring myself to care. I began working my way through the wine cellar.

It was when I was down there, one day, that the bombs came down. I felt the earth shake over my head, and when I mounted the stairs an hour later my house had collapsed around me. Cavernous walls bowed in, shattered windows were obscured with earth, the wooden beams of the house creaked and groaned under the weight of rubble. It was dark and stifling and still large, like the belly of a whale, and in the center of the floor lay a bomb.

It didn't seem about to go off, so I circled it at a distance and tried to remember what I'd read about German bombs. There had been an article in the last newspaper I'd bothered to look at. They were iron shells full of destructive magic, released when their metal shell was cracked or some requirements for the seething spell within were met. Every one one-fifth of a magician's life, and the Germans were beginning to drop dozens of them. I remembered Iffley, the blood on the walls and the cracked windows, and bile rose in my throat. That man had chosen to use his magic in that way, but I could not imagine that a rational magician would agree to it willingly. I felt a strange sympathy for the magician who had spent part of their soul in such a manner.

But what were the requirements for this spell? It had been dropped rather precisely here. Perhaps, ascribing more credit to me than I deserved, they thought I might follow in my mother's footsteps and kill a great deal of their people. Still, why would it be meant for me and not awaken when I stood within twenty feet of it?

A thought struck me, and I almost laughed aloud; then I remembered that nobody was here to think me mad, and I did laugh. They had meant the bomb for a magician, of course. But while my spell for Isaac had been publicized, my earlier expenditures were shrouded in mystery. They had expected a magician with at least two spells left. My one remaining scrap was not enough to trigger the bomb unless I stood next to it.

I left it where it lay and went to investigate the doors.

My bad luck held, and they were all blocked by wreckage. I was trapped and help was not likely to come. And for all that I'd willingly shut myself off from life, I felt a pang of huge and echoing terror at the thought. I wanted, for a fiery moment, to survive; or at least to know that my death would be noticed, that I would be mourned. If I had still possessed two spells, I would have used one then.

But I only had one, and the moment passed.

In two weeks' time I had run through most of my food, and had nigh-unconsciously begun spending time nearer to the bomb. It was a contest of wills, fueled by my ragged mind; it seemed to me that my own weakening instinct to live fought against the soul-fragment of the magician who wished me to die. I spoke to it, sometimes. Would have named it, if I were a little more mad. Told it the story of my life, as far as I knew it. "We haven't gotten to the ending yet," I informed it, in a conspiratorial tone, "but I know I shall die. It only remains to see how."

In my defense, I was rather drunk during those weeks, and in my further defense, my father kept a far more extensive wine-cellar than I did a pantry. Recalling my mother, I can hardly blame him.

Regardless: after two weeks, as I sat and studied the bomb and wondered how swift a death it might be to trigger it, I heard noises faint and far above me. I thought at first they were delusions—I had imagined, many nights, the sound of a cat padding through the hallways, or the creak of mechanical legs—but I kept listening, and realized they were the sounds of digging.

Someone had come.

I leapt to my feet, head spinning, and looked upwards. I could hear a voice now, shouting, but it was too far away to recognize. But as I stood there, shaking, so overwhelmed I did not know whether I felt joy or terror, I heard another noise: a slow and measured cracking.

There must be magicians in the group above. The bomb began to tremble, like a hatching egg, and in a moment it would split open.

I wished that I did not have time to think. Magic, excusing the spell I performed unwillingly, always came in a moment of impulse. But the metal egg cracked slowly, and my hands trembled, and my traitor mind said Wait a moment longer. It has not gone off yet; they might be near enough to call to, soon, and someone else—

Someone else, I knew with utter certainty, would come too late. That did not make the magic come easily, it did not spur me on without thought, but it gave me the strength to raise my hand toward the shivering spell on the floor.

"You were meant for me," I reminded it, and as the shell finally opened I enclosed it. The force was strong, almost stronger than I, and had to go somewhere, so I directed it toward the part of the ceiling which I had heard nothing from. I had to hope that was enough.

The spell was silent, save for the roar of the roof parting before it, and nothing more than a glimmer of light to my eyes. I sank to my knees, watching the ceiling split open, and saw the cloudy sky for the first time in weeks.

Far away, I heard a shout. I still could not recognize the voice, but it seemed familiar. Perhaps it was one of the young magicians who had stopped at my door. Perhaps it was Isaac. Anything seemed likely, in that moment. The cloudy sky dimmed before my eyes as my vision failed, but my mind's eye seemed to sharpen. I thought I saw the house from the outside, clear as day, and felt a cat winding around my legs, her purring weight incredibly familiar. The weight transformed into water and I stood, for a moment, in the lake where I wove Asuka’s spell.

Some say a magician splits into five pieces at their death, but it felt more like becoming whole.

And here—no, this cannot be death, for I find myself back in Amel's room in Iffley, where I never worked a spell, and she smiles at me so hard her eyes crease up to almost nothing. "How's himself?" she asks, and I answer, and while I do she gets up—her legs no longer creaking as badly as they did—and paces to the door to open it. Morrow slips half of her long grey body inside, but in the way of cats she can't make up her mind; as Amel and I sink deeper into conversation she comes in and goes out, in and out, in and out and in and out.

END

"Defining the Shapes of our Selves" is copyright Jes Rausch 2017.

"The Last Spell of the Raven" is copyright Morris Tanafon 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" by Craig Laurance Gidney.

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Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 47 for September 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to share this story with you. ...

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 47 for September 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to share this story with you. Today we have a poem by Jes Rausch, "Defining the Shapes of our Selves," and a GlitterShip original, "The Last Spell of the Raven" by Morris Tanafon. This is the last original story from GlitterShip Summer 2017, which you can pick up at glittership.com/buy if you would like to have your own copy. More importantly, however, this means that the Autumn 2017 issue is coming out soon!

Jes Rausch lives and writes in Wisconsin, with too many pets and too much beer for company. Nir fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Lethe Press. Find nem not updating nir Twitter @jesrausch.

"Defining the Shapes of our Selves"

by Jes Rausch

Book One

when we reached Fire Nest on Summit, hot sun hanging low in the sky like an egg, biding, the dirt streets were dusty as smoke. So this is what the capitol of the Dragon Lands is like, i said, and, i never dreamt i’d be here, breathe in dust that must once have been the scales of ancients. There, you said, and pointed out a spire among spires, the twisting of another sculpted tail in a sea of swirling tails and horns and There, you said, and interrupted my awe with one of your smiles, man to me. When we reached Fire Nest on Summit, our pouches full of rubies, the aura of crime marinating them to a fine delicacy, we strode down streets dusty with smoke, smoky with the scent of food and sounds and flashes of golds and crimsons. We were here for a reason, a purpose, a journey, and here we were at the door carved of real dragon bone before the set of scale-clad guards, to bargain and banter and barter our way into the deal of a lifetime. Said the guard who stepped forward, He requires men and women meet specific challenges attuned to their natures to pass, and Step this way, to you. When we reached Fire Nest on Summit, you walked through your designated door, and i left behind in your dust, was told to wait when the guard could not determine which frame fit. Said the guard, it is better this way, after all, you cannot meet the challenges without a reason, a purpose, a journey.

Book Two

When I stepped into the apartment I heard the burble of the fish tank, that constant watery murmur that gives me what little comfort it can. I turn on all the lights today, and a little music too. The curtains already drawn, this little home a sanctuary where I can pee however I want to, and with the door open. Out there in the world deemed real, I can try too hard to talk with coworkers, meet company standards, go by unseen. But here I can make chicken tikka. Chicken tikka doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care if you live or die either, so in a way, it is the world deemed real, and here, in my home I can devour it.

Book Three

when we slid into Io Port 7 dock, powered down, cleared the security scans, and disembarked after five long hours of waiting around in the mess, prisoners in our own ship, i was ready for a bit of fun. Ten months out in a vacuum will do that to you. Chasing odd jobs around stars, snagging a get-rich-quick scheme out of orbit is a tiring way to live. Dull as an old hull, random as a time of death. Our boots made the obligatory clank- clank noise down the corridors, our voices blocked them out. See, i was never free ‘til i reached for a star and grabbed a bucket of rust, made the engines run ]]>

GlitterShipYesNo28fullEpisode #46 — “Nostalgia” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeamhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-46-nostalgia-by-bonnie-jo-stufflebeam/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-46-nostalgia-by-bonnie-jo-stufflebeam/#commentsFri, 29 Sep 2017 13:38:29 -0400GlitterShipdrugs nostalgia non-binary genderGlitterShip.podbean.com/episode-46-nostalgia-by-bonnie-jo-stufflebeam-24b00f90dd1700f333f1ee8f1a4eedd1Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 46 for September 21, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, “Nostalgia.”

Content warning for the good, the bad, and the ugly: sex, drug addiction, and references to stalking.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction and poetry has appeared in over 40 magazines such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award and Selected Shorts’ Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize. Her audio fiction-jazz collaborative album Strange Monsters was released from Easy Brew Studio in April 2016. You can find her online at www.bonniejostufflebeam.com or on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle.

Nostalgia

by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Tori takes another hit of [...]

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 46 for September 21, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, "Nostalgia."

Content warning for the good, the bad, and the ugly: sex, drug addiction, and references to stalking.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam's fiction and poetry has appeared in over 40 magazines such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award and Selected Shorts' Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize. Her audio fiction-jazz collaborative album Strange Monsters was released from Easy Brew Studio in April 2016. You can find her online at www.bonniejostufflebeam.com or on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle.

Nostalgia

by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Tori takes another hit of nostalgia; the smoke is creamy mint cookie down her throat, smooth and hot. It fills her lungs, tickles, burns, and as she coughs it out she laughs, smoke pouring from her lips. Fog fills her head. The live oaks’ winter skeletons crisp into focus as the drug takes hold. Tori feels the cold on her skin as if she is a little girl in the snow, her hand in her father’s glove, surrounded by his smell of smoke and vodka. Her mother hates the cold but watches from the window. Tori’s belly is full. It hasn’t been this full for years, not since home, that word a lighthouse beacon she will never again reach without this burn of throat, cloud of mind, her parents having pushed her out once they met her first girlfriend. Tori passes the pipe to her companion.

Her new friend confuses her; she’s never been with a slate before, and even though Kay is pre-op, it’s taken some concentration not to mix up the pronouns. Shu¸ Tori practices on nights that Kay does not sleep over. Shur. Still, she’s messed up a couple of times, accidentally said she instead of shu, her instead of shur. Kay does not seem to mind these slip-ups, and it is because of this easy-goingness that Tori has let Kay into her head nearly as much as nostalgia.

Kay flicks the lighter over the blue-black herb but does not inhale. Instead shu watches the leaves char in the pipe’s bowl.

“Sorry.” Kay shrugs shur thick shoulders; the grey scarf around shur neck shifts in the breeze. Tori itches to bat the decorative balls which hang from it but doesn't.

Instead she remembers. When she was a little girl, she had an orange cat who batted at her scarves. Another cat in college, living with that first girlfriend, Meredith. Meredith’s skin against her own, protection from the cold, a laugh like medicine she didn’t know she needed.

“You okay?” Kay asks, squeezing the nub of her shoulder. Tori opens her eyes. She had closed them without realizing. This is sad to her, like the day Meredith moved up north.

“Fine,” she says. “Cold is all.”

Later, atop the flannel red-and-white holiday sheets, Tori closes her eyes again and imagines familiar fingers, longer and thinner than Kay’s, inside her, lets the nostalgia hum within like a tongue, lets herself dissolve into the memory of love. One day, she thinks, kissing the nape of Kay’s bare neck, shu will feel like memory, shur blank, nippleless chest a comfort of familiarity rather than this stiff newness, this gloss. Tori wants it dull like a pencil worn to the nub.

When they are finished, breathless in one another’s embrace, Tori burrows her face in the hair of Kay’s armpits, the smell of animal musk and orgasm. As the nostalgia wears off, a veil lifts on this moment, the past fogging instead like a breathed-upon window. Kay’s skin is real under her ear, the drum of shur heartbeat a surge through her. It makes her own heart beat faster, her palms sweat. She swallows her spit. To quiet the silence, she pulls her face from the sweat of Kay’s body and examines shur in the room’s dark.

“Your photographs,” she says, “they’re good.”

Kay laughs. “I know. Is that the only reason you’re with me?”

Tori lets her head fall back into place. She knows that Kay is not comfortable enough yet to push, and the question is difficult to answer. Yes, she should say, the photographs. But this would be too much. It would stress her throat, already sore from the smoke. Behind her eyes she recalls them, the photographs, dancers leaping from frame to frame like in a flip-book.

Tori had glimpsed Kay every day at the college as Kay walked past Tori mopping the same spot again and again, trying to look busy so that she would not have to catch Kay’s eye. Because she knew who Kay was, had seen shur picture in the school paper, had heard shur name repeated back when Tori was a student, back before her only affiliations with the school were the mop and broom they issued her, the paycheck they sent her monthly for cleaning the classrooms and bathrooms of the art buildings.

Whenever Tori had a moment, she stopped to stare at Kay’s photographs. Once she dared to touch them; she wanted to see if the dancer was real, some little person imprisoned in the film, forced to tango and ballet and flamenco hour after hour, day after day, year after year, but it was just paper under Tori’s finger, glossy as what would be Tori and Kay’s future bedroom shenanigans. The dancers were always slates, or disguised as slates. Tori couldn’t believe there could be so many of them in Riddle, Texas, their small college town. And the way they changed from photo to photo, like devils. Like angels. Like monsters. Like memories Tori struggled to remember without the help of smoke down her throat.

“Do you want to learn how to take them?” Kay asks. “I can teach you. I think you’d be good at it.”

The idea sends a shiver down Tori’s spine; it both intrigues and terrifies her. Too new.

“I can’t,” she says.

Tori is at the sink filling a glass with water when Meredith knocks at the kitchen door.

“Whose car is that outside?” Meredith asks as she pushes past Tori. “You better not dance for her, whoever she is.” In the time since she has been away, she’s shaved the sides of her head so that the middle patch of hair falls over two bald spots. “If you dance for her, I swear.”

It isn’t a surprise to see Meredith there, but also it is a surprise, as each time she shows up it sends a shock down Tori’s belly to her groin. A Pavlov’s bell. Tori leaves the faucet on, lets the water run over the sides of the glass and down the drain.

“I don’t dance,” Tori says, leaning against the sink, digging her hands into the pockets of her pajama pants.

“Bullshit you don’t dance,” Meredith says. “We used to dance all the time.”

“Not anymore. I only danced with you.”

Meredith's smile dimples her cheeks. She looks stronger, thicker; from her letters, Tori knows that she’s been climbing rocks, running races, cycling across mountains until her muscles quiver. “Prove it,” she says.

Even though Kay is in the other room, asleep with shur head on Tori’s pillow, Tori’s belly aches for a kiss she knows the taste of. Berries and salt. If she could bury her head in Meredith’s hair, she would smell the slick oil sweet. She knows this. She knows, too, the way Meredith will move against her in a dance of sweat, the way Meredith will not let Tori touch her. The way she will, once Tori is gasping in her arms, jump up and disappear to the bathroom, how she will emerge flushed and breathless. How she will say, “I took care of it myself.” And how Tori will accept this. She knows, too, that as they sit on the couch with their legs intertwined, Meredith will not ask about Kay.

Sure enough, it happens like that. Meredith is out the door twenty minutes later. When Tori crawls back into bed, Kay rolls over and kisses the top of her forehead.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tori closes her eyes and counts the hours until she can light up again.

When she runs out of nostalgia, she calls up her high school friend, Logan. He and her other friends from that time have never left the small town where they all grew up together, Agape, where they spent weekends downing stolen vodka and imbibing a rainbow assortment of drugs until nostalgia became their drug of choice.

One hour’s drive south and Tori is knocking on Logan’s door. Logan answers, his skintight jeans smeared with forgotten food particles. His eyes are red as emergency exit letters. When he wraps his arms around her, she feels as though this moment has already occurred. Déjà vu. But of course it's happened before, at least once every two weeks for the last six years of her life.

“You have some?” she asks.

Logan leads her by the hand back to his room, where four old friends and one man Tori has never seen sit around a hookah. Inside his parents’ house everything is the same: the same black curtains drawn across every window, the same stuffed moose head mounted above the neglected fireplace, the same smell of stale smoke and semen-filled napkins left too long in Logan’s wastebasket. The coal atop the hookah smolders redder than their eyes. As Tori's eyes adjust, her chest constricts; it’s a scene straight from senior year when she didn’t yet know who she was, when she hadn’t yet grown into her own skin, was still shy and ashamed of herself, awkward in her body. This is a thought she struggles to swallow every time she comes here. Instead she takes the pipe they pass her and sucks in the rancid smoke.

Once her eyes match theirs, she feels right again. She looks from face to face in the circle. Back in the day, they used to sneak into the woods to smoke this stuff. They would break into a rundown shed and sit on a ratty couch that smelled of mildew. They nearly got caught by the cops a couple of times, but they were young. Maybe that is the difference, Tori thinks, I know now that I can crumble like charred nostalgia. There was another one of them back then, a boy Tori thought for a while that she loved. They let Daniel be their leader, clung to his every word. She let him be her first boy. The only mistake she ever admitted to.

She recalls his lips on her neck, his fingers tracing the necklace he slipped around her neck like a collar. This is not the way, he said, this is not the way to love you. Even though his raving words made no sense, she believed them.

Later she realized he wasn’t right in the head. He smoked too much. Took other drugs. Shot some into his veins. Back then, especially, it had been nothing more than cigarettes and booze pilfered from the bottom shelves of their parents’ vice cabinets for the rest of them. They left Daniel to his own.

“Are you staying for a while?” Annie asks.

“I don’t think so,” Tori says, taking another hit. This one tastes like day-old salad in her throat. A bad hit. She pulls her water bottle from her purse and tries to swallow the taste. “I have to get back.”

“It’s okay,” Logan says. “Big college grad, we know you’re not like us anymore.”

Nothing could be closer and farther from the truth.

At home Tori arranges the baggie of nostalgia in a cedar box where she also keeps papers and a glass pipe with a rainbow flower blown onto it. She calls Kay and asks shur to come over. When shu arrives, shu has brought along a digital camera which shu hands to Tori like a holy relic. The camera is red and feels heavy in Tori’s palm.

“It’s neat,” Tori says, thrusting it back at Kay. “Is it new?”

Kay won’t take it back. Instead shu stands by Tori’s side and shows her how to turn it on.

“It’s for you,” shu says. Shu arranges Tori’s fingers over the buttons, uses Tori’s hand like a puppet to take a photograph of the window in Tori’s living room. “You have an eye for this,” shu says. “Don’t waste it.”

“I can’t take this,” Tori says. It feels hard and slick and smells of new plastic. She hates the smell. She tries again to give it back, and when Kay won’t take it, her fingers go limp. The camera falls to the carpet with a thud.

Kay leaves it where it has fallen. Takes Tori’s hands in shur own and kisses the knuckles. “It’s okay,” shu says. “You don’t have to.” Lets shur lips graze the hairs on Tori’s arms, kisses the mole on her neck, kisses her eyebrows. Unbuttons her. Tori can tell shu wants to disrobe all of her, peel off her skin even, see inside her body like an X-ray. But Tori won’t let shur.

Kay’s body will change after shur operation. Tori isn’t sure that she will be okay with this. Thinking of Kay’s body as something she will have to get used to twice leaves a heavy food feeling in her stomach. Although she’s familiar with the way a typical slate body looks post-op – she took a class on gender and sexuality at the university – she wishes she could have met shu once she was already complete, once shu had already grown into the new skin, the smooth Barbie V between shur legs. At least, Tori thinks as she runs her hands over the flat chest she has made a fascination, Kay got this part out of the way before we met.

“I won’t know what to do with you,” Tori whispers, “after the operation.”

Kay’s voice, usually calm, is hard-edged when shu responds. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Tori isn’t one hundred percent sure. She laughs at herself. When is she ever?

“I just wish, you know, that we’d met once you were complete.” She thinks it might help if she explains, but she can't seem to spit the words out. Not without time. She wishes she could freeze the moment and collect herself, but the world doesn’t grant wishes that way.

“Complete?” Kay pushes Tori off shur chest. “I’m just as complete now as I’ll ever be. I'll be more comfortable in my skin, sure, but I'm not incomplete. And besides,” shu says, “you’re one to talk. What are you doing with your life? You think your reason for living is so you can clean other people’s messes?” Shu stops, though Tori can tell shu wants to go on. Then shu looks away. “I’m sorry,” shu says. Shu doesn’t wait for Tori to say anything, and Tori isn’t sure she would say anything given the chance.

Once Kay has gone, Tori loads a bowl, tripping over the camera on her way back to bed. She kicks it underneath the couch like the soccer ball she and her father used to pass back and forth out in the cool green grass, tinged with dew, until the chill on her bare feet became too much and her father would carry her inside and lower her onto the dry carpet. It's a memory empty of the sound of ice clinking in a glass, empty of the alcohol smell. She scrunches her toes against the carpet, a dirty shag she hasn’t vacuumed in at least a month. It doesn’t feel the same. If the world granted wishes, she would wish that it would feel the same.

The bonfire in Tori’s yard is already blazing when Meredith skids into Tori’s gravel drive on her Harley. It has been three days since Tori’s fight with Kay, and she is surprised to see Meredith so soon after the last visit. It’s surprising not to have to reacquaint herself; it’s nice. The fire’s warmth makes her bare legs burn.

“Long time no see,” Tori says.

“I missed you,” Meredith says.

Tori has known Meredith long enough to decipher this code. What she means to say is, she couldn’t stand the thought of Tori with someone else. And so she has returned. Tori takes another hit in the hopes that she can convince herself that this time will be forever. They sit by the fire.

“Can’t believe you still do this shit,” Meredith says, lighting the bowl.

“And you don’t?”

Meredith laughs. “I didn’t say that. Just, you were always so smart, Tori. Smarter than any of us. I figured you’d grow up faster.”

Tori doesn’t want to think about it. She blows smoke from her nose. The burn makes her body tremble the way fingers will, later, when the two of them are once more wrapped in Tori’s sheets. Tori recalls that first time, when Meredith pushed her onto her own bed. Took control of Tori’s room without asking. Tori loved that she didn’t ask. She felt in capable hands. They made love to B.B. King on repeat. When they woke in the morning, the air was too hot for such closeness, but they clung to each other anyway. They turned off the music and let the noise of their breath soothe them back into fevered half-sleep.

“Where’s the old gang?” Meredith dumps the cashed bowl into the fire. “Call them up.”

Once Meredith left, there was nothing more to hold their group of college friends together, though during the five years of undergrad they spent every weekend together. Meredith had been glue, and none of them had ever noticed, not even Tori, who had felt her sticky sweat-soaked skin. But Tori still has their numbers.

An hour later, three chairs around the bonfire have filled with the warm bodies Tori used to cling to, sloppy with drink and smoke, as they stumbled home from evenings of smoke circles and study sessions, one-night stands and late-night movie marathons. When Daniel wouldn’t stop calling, even two years after the breakup, it was these friends who, never having known him, demanded he leave her alone. Only two of their old gang is able to make it; the rest, like Meredith, moved away from Riddle after graduation. Still, looking from face to face around the fire is like looking four years into the past, and Tori’s body hums, static building under skin. She wants nothing more than to run through the field surrounding her house, to float kites as Meredith scribbles poetry in her little black notebook. Always Tori used to wonder if Meredith was writing about her. Then she knew she never was; instead she wrote of the foreign places she disappeared to more and more those days. A fantastic life she hadn’t asked Tori to be part of.

Once the beer has been drained and the empty bottles tossed into the fire in hopes that they will burst, once they have finished off the last of the nostalgia, leaving only ash and a charred roach to burn, they sit back in their chairs and dream of running, though in reality none of them could summon the energy. The hum takes Tori over like an orgasm that never stops. She feels as if, for the first time since graduation, since she lost her place in this college town, she is home.

The hum intensifies. It vibrates her legs and creeps up into the space between her legs. For a moment she remembers Kay. Then forgets. Then it is Meredith again, Meredith’s dimpled smile, her soft thighs. Music that she recognizes.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Meredith slurs, clapping her hand over Tori’s pants pocket, where Tori’s phone has been ringing.

The phone feels strange in her sweaty palm, like an object that was never meant to be in this world. The caller ID tells her before she picks up that Logan’s will be the voice on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry,” Logan says when she picks up. “I had to tell you. Daniel killed himself two weeks ago.”

A wave of numb travels from her ear to her feet. Her stomach flops as if she has swallowed sour milk. She can feel Daniel all of a sudden. His hands like a bandage across her wrist, pulling her onto his bed while his parents were away. Refusing to let go of her hand in the night. Saying, if something ever happened to you. If anyone ever hurt you. And she knew, back then, that he was damaged. Had seen his own stepfather’s dead body hanging from the ceiling. Had heard the fights from the other side of thin walls for all his childhood. She thought he was strong, thought he had grown from these experiences. How, she wanted and did not want to ask. So she didn’t. She could feel his lips down her neck and thought of how those lips would go blue-black in the earth.

“No. They had a secret funeral already. But we’re having a memorial, next weekend. We’re going to the barn. We’ll say a few words about him, you know. We’re meeting at my house. If you want to come. If you can stay a while.”

“I’ll be there,” Tori says.

The phone goes quiet. Meredith doesn’t ask who it was, what it was, and Tori moves her leg so that Meredith’s hand falls away.

“What’s up?” Meredith asks, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Daniel’s dead. Killed himself.”

Meredith’s eyes widen. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Will you go to the memorial with me next weekend?”

“I can’t. I have a family thing next weekend, out of town. I already told them I’d go.”

“Right.” Tori nods, though what Meredith said seems strange, like déjà vu again. Tori remembers her grandfather’s death, how her tears made Meredith anxious, how Meredith shrugged stiffly, told Tori she had to leave. That she had a family reunion to go to. Left Tori on the edge of her bed, clutching her own shaking body. “Right,” Tori says.

Tori leaves the fire, goes inside, locks the door behind her. No one bothers her for hours, and when they do, she ignores the knocks, the pleas to please let them in to use the restroom. She googles Daniel’s name. She finds an old arrest brief from Daniel’s breaking-and-entering charge, which happened the year after college. Daniel had called her about it, drunk and sorry for himself. But there is no obituary, no news of a suicide. She searches for hours and finds nothing more, her fingers a fever on the keys, her mind a blank race of guilty thoughts. Could she have saved him? She wishes she had someone to tell her that she couldn’t have. But it sounds as if, outside, the party has moved on.

It’s the hour of nothing good when there is another knock at the door.

“It’s weird, but maybe they just wanted to keep it secret. Don’t tear yourself up about this, okay? Listen, I’ll go with you, if you want, to the memorial.”

Tori lets herself disappear beneath Kay’s armpit. Breathes in the musk smell. She will let shur take care of her. Will let shur hold her and hide her from the light. Will let shur apologize for her and, yes, even love her.

Having grown up in the city, Kay says during the drive down from Riddle, shu has never been in a town like Agape.

“As you can see, you’re not missing much,” Tori says as she navigates the car along the one road which curves like a snake through the small town, from the high school to the diner to the post office to the elementary to the gated community of houses which could fit five of Tori’s tiny duplex within their walls. This is her past, laid bare without the itch in the throat, though Tori has brought along the last of her nostalgia for the memorial.

“I bet you could take some great photographs here,” Kay says as they pass the stone mega church. “Will the memorial be there?”

The memorial. For the length of the drive, she let herself forget, but now she must remember. Every bitter detail. There will be no turning around. For the last week she has felt on edge, always shaking in the night, looking every day for information, calling up old friends to see if they have heard. And no one else has.

“No,” Tori says. “Not there.”

To stop her shaking, and because she cannot, at the moment, go on to Logan’s, Tori stops at the town’s only coffee shop, a little place with crosses on the walls and in a jewelry case at the front counter. The young man behind the counter is someone Tori used to know, an old friend. Jaden. She wonders why, smart boy like him, he never got out of this place.

“How are you?” he asks, smiling briefly at Kay before looking back to Tori. Kay stands with shur arms in shur jacket pockets.

Tori shrugs. “Okay enough, considering the occasion.”

“What occasion?”

He doesn’t know, she realizes with cold dread. Although he and Daniel were never best friends, were never lovers, they were close. As if shu can read her, Kay grabs her hand.

“Daniel’s dead,” Tori says. “Killed himself.”

“What? When was this?” Jaden says.

“Three weeks ago.”

He laughs. The sound is a fire alarm. When he realizes Tori isn’t laughing with him, he opens his mouth, shuts it. “I saw Daniel at the general store last night. He was fine.”

Cold dread is becoming as familiar as a fever. Because this news is neither good nor bad; it moves into her gut and twists her insides.

“Excuse me,” she says, and she rushes from the coffee shop, the door’s jingle a throb in her head. Beside the car, she calls Logan. He answers on the first ring.

“Where are you?” he asks. “You’re late. The rest of the gang is here already. We’re ready to go.”

“Daniel’s alive,” Tori says. “Jaden says they saw him last night, at work.”

“That's impossible,” Logan says.

“I’m telling you, I just saw Jaden, and he says Daniel is one hundred percent fine.”

“We’re all here. Waiting for you. Just come on. It’ll be like old times. We can’t know for certain. Let’s just have the memorial, go out to the barn, share some bowls. Say a few words. In honor of Daniel. I mean, his mom called me. She called me the day it happened, a week ago. She was crying. There’s no way she was faking that.”

“A week ago,” Tori says. And she knows then not to argue. She hangs up. Kay has joined her beside the car, and without explaining where they’re going, they climb in. Tori drives. She remembers the way; she would remember it with her eyes closed. Back then she took this road out of mind. She is out of mind again, and no drug has passed through her system since the night before, when Kay watched her smoke a bowl of nostalgia to black.

Daniel’s father’s house is stone, situated back from the road and surrounded by lean live oaks. The yard is dark, and as they walk hand in hand up the gravel path Tori’s heart hyperventilates in her chest. Before they reach the door, a man emerges, his arms crossed.

“Can I help you?”

“We’re looking for Daniel,” Tori says. She doesn’t know if Daniel’s father will remember her. If he knows that she was the first woman to strip him down and take him into her mouth, to crawl on top of him and initiate him into the world of lovers. That she has regretted that decision, and not only because Daniel wasn’t ready, not only because Daniel blamed her for losing himself. “I’m an old friend. I had dinner here once.” Matzo balls in broth. Toast and steamed Brussels sprouts.

“Not really, but my memory’s not all it used to be. Daniel’s in his room, up there. Do you want me to go get him?”

Tori’s body wilts. Relief. She thinks about the last time she saw him, his hair tangled, clothes baggy and torn, eyes bloodshot. The memories overwhelmed her like a drug, and it was because of him that she no longer frequented Agape unless she needed to. Unless she needed nostalgia shoved into clear plastic baggies.

“No, thanks,” she says. “I’m tired of rehashing. But he’s not dead?”

“Dead? No, Daniel’s not dead. Why?”

“A friend lied to me,” she says.

“Doesn’t sound like a friend to me.” Daniel’s father’s arms have come uncrossed, and Tori isn’t sure when in the conversation it happened, but it seems to signal some small degree of remembrance. And what else could she ask for but to be remembered?

“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks so much. Don’t tell Daniel I was here, please.”

The man nods. "I remember you," he says. "I won't."

Tori and Kay turn and walk from the driveway, slower this time, Tori listening to the crunch of their footsteps on the path. Kay’s hand in hers makes her feel safe, as if Kay could protect her, if she needed it, which she doesn’t.

They don’t go to Logan’s. Tori deletes his number from her phone, as she did Daniel’s long ago. Later she will block it, too. She is not mad at him. She understands the urge to hold on, to keep the people who were once close nearby. To relive that which you remember in a hazy euphoria. Instead, she and Kay drive home, where they sit beside the fire and look, without speaking, into the waves of heat lifting to the sky like a mirage in the air. Tori doesn’t load a bowl.

Kay snaps a picture of her in the firelight; when developed, it will show her body dark as night. She will not be smiling, though there will be a rosy fire glow on her cheeks.

It will not be easy, Tori thinks, to stop. She will want to remember. Her photographs, then. She will capture the places she once loved, the people she will try to love in new ways. She opens the box on her desk and spreads the remaining nostalgia across a blank piece of paper. Arranges it to form a picture; a figure with no shape, no curves, no breasts, no genitals. Not too bad, she thinks. I can get used to it, she thinks.

The flash lightning cuts the room in half. Dots swim before Tori’s eyes. She hopes the picture will come out, but there’s no way to know until she develops it in the art building’s darkroom. It’s a beautiful feeling, to see and not see what the future will bring.

END

“Nostalgia” was originally published in Interzone, and is copyright Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

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Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original: "The Last Spell of the Raven" by Morris Tanafon and a poem by Jes Rausch.

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 46 for September 21, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with ...Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 46 for September 21, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, "Nostalgia."

Content warning for the good, the bad, and the ugly: sex, drug addiction, and references to stalking.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam's fiction and poetry has appeared in over 40 magazines such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award and Selected Shorts' Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize. Her audio fiction-jazz collaborative album Strange Monsters was released from Easy Brew Studio in April 2016. You can find her online at www.bonniejostufflebeam.com or on Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle.

Nostalgia

by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Tori takes another hit of nostalgia; the smoke is creamy mint cookie down her throat, smooth and hot. It fills her lungs, tickles, burns, and as she coughs it out she laughs, smoke pouring from her lips. Fog fills her head. The live oaks’ winter skeletons crisp into focus as the drug takes hold. Tori feels the cold on her skin as if she is a little girl in the snow, her hand in her father’s glove, surrounded by his smell of smoke and vodka. Her mother hates the cold but watches from the window. Tori’s belly is full. It hasn’t been this full for years, not since home, that word a lighthouse beacon she will never again reach without this burn of throat, cloud of mind, her parents having pushed her out once they met her first girlfriend. Tori passes the pipe to her companion.

Her new friend confuses her; she’s never been with a slate before, and even though Kay is pre-op, it’s taken some concentration not to mix up the pronouns. Shu¸ Tori practices on nights that Kay does not sleep over. Shur. Still, she’s messed up a couple of times, accidentally said she instead of shu, her instead of shur. Kay does not seem to mind these slip-ups, and it is because of this easy-goingness that Tori has let Kay into her head nearly as much as nostalgia.

Kay flicks the lighter over the blue-black herb but does not inhale. Instead shu watches the leaves char in the pipe’s bowl.

“Sorry.” Kay shrugs shur thick shoulders; the grey scarf around shur neck shifts in the breeze. Tori itches to bat the decorative balls which hang from it but doesn't.

Instead she remembers. When she was a little girl, she had an orange cat who batted at her scarves. Another cat in college, living with that first girlfriend, Meredith. Meredith’s skin against her own, protection from the cold, a laugh like medicine she didn’t know she needed.

“You okay?” Kay asks, squeezing the nub of her shoulder. Tori opens her eyes. She had closed them without realizing. This is sad to her, like the day Meredith moved up north.

“Fine,” she says. “Cold is all.”

Later, atop the flannel red-and-white holiday sheets, Tori closes her eyes again and imagines familiar fingers, longer and thinner than Kay’s, inside her, lets the nostalgia hum within like a tongue, lets herself dissolve into the memory of love. One day, she thinks, kissing the nape of Kay’s bare neck, shu will feel like memory, shur blank, nippleless chest a comfort of familiarity rather than this stiff newness, this gloss. Tori wants it dull like a pencil worn to the nub.

When they are finished, breathless in one another’s embrace, Tori burrows her face in the hair of Kay’s]]>

GlitterShipYesNo00:35:2327fullEpisode #45: “The Pond” by Amy Ogdenhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-45-the-pond-by-amy-ogden/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-45-the-pond-by-amy-ogden/#commentsSun, 24 Sep 2017 14:33:04 -0400GlitterShipdead children oneiroiGlitterShip.podbean.com/episode-45-the-pond-by-amy-ogden-24b00f90dd1700f333f1ee8f1a4eedd1Hello! This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have another GlitterShip original and a poem. Our poem today is “A Seduction by a Sister of the Oneiroi” by Hester J. Rook, and our original story is “The Pond” by Aimee Ogden.

If you enjoy this story and would like to read ahead in the Summer 2017 issue, you can pick that up at glittership.com/buy for $2.99 and get your very own copies of the winter and spring 2017 issues as well.

Finally, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is still on sale in the Kindle and Nook stores for $4.99, and you can pick up the paperback copy for $17.95.

Hester J. Rook is an Australian writer and co-editor of Twisted Moon magazine, a magazine of speculative erotic poetry (twistedmoonmag.com). She has previous prose and poetry publications in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Liminality Magazine, St [...]

]]>Hello! This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have another GlitterShip original and a poem. Our poem today is "A Seduction by a Sister of the Oneiroi" by Hester J. Rook, and our original story is "The Pond" by Aimee Ogden.

If you enjoy this story and would like to read ahead in the Summer 2017 issue, you can pick that up at glittership.com/buy for $2.99 and get your very own copies of the winter and spring 2017 issues as well.

Finally, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is still on sale in the Kindle and Nook stores for $4.99, and you can pick up the paperback copy for $17.95.

Hester J. Rook is an Australian writer and co-editor of Twisted Moon magazine, a magazine of speculative erotic poetry (twistedmoonmag.com). She has previous prose and poetry publications in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Liminality Magazine, Strangelet and others. She's on Twitter @kitemonster and you can find her other work on her site http://hesterjrook.wordpress.com/.

A seduction by a sister of the Oneiroi

Hester J. Rook

The night is velvet warm, mosquito pricked. There is prosecco through my tongue and pear juice sticky down my wrists. Her mouth is sugar rich and cream softened, velvet dipped in moonlight. “We are goddesses already,” she is wine voiced and dusk cloaked, autumn leaves behind eyes translucent as cathedral glass. “My heart is wraithlike sour, bitter as lemon rind and my realm soft-surreal and afraid. But you you taste of marzipan at sunset earthen-toed and iron scented, like a storm. A goddess already.” She ties back her dream-soaked curls and lights up each star, palm raised high and fingertips aflame. “Come back with me.” And, fizzy-tongued and plum sweetened, I do.

Aimee Ogden is a former science teacher and software tester. Nowadays, she writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses. Her work has also appeared in Apex, Shimmer, and Cast of Wonders. Aimee lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where you can find her at the gym, in the garden, with a faceful of cheese curds at the local farmer's market, or, less messily, just on Twitter: @Aimee_Ogden.

The Pond

by Aimee Ogden

Laura almost misses the first message.

A screaming match with Sana has driven her out into the frost-rimed evening. The baby’s cries and Sana’s frustrated shushing chase her across the yard; Ifrah is not an easy infant like her brother was. Laura and Sana’s relationship is not an easy one like it was back when Christopher was born, either.

Laura stops to cram her skis onto her feet only once she is far enough away to shut out the sounds from the house. Her only illumination comes from the headlamp clipped to her hat; the moon hides behind thick, dull clouds. It would have been so easy to race past the windswept pond without a second glance. But the headlamp glints on the dull frozen surface, and two stark words etched beneath catch and hold her eye: HELLO MOMMY.

Snow crunches when she hits her knees beside the pond. Her ankles twist under the torque of the skis, but she is paralyzed by the cruelty carved into those two words. Her heart throbs in her chest. Which of the neighbor’s teenage children could have, would have done such a thing?

In spite of herself, she reaches out and puts one hand on top of the words. Through her thin gloves, she can’t feel the ridges that the prankster’s knife should have left in the ice. Impossible. She lays both hands flat over the words, squeezes her eyes shut, as if her hands can erase what has been done.

When she opens her eyes and parts her fingers, the words are gone.

Relief and panic wrestle for control inside Laura’s chest. After this awful year, is she finally losing her mind? Maybe the heat from her hands has melted the ice and erased the words.

As she struggles for a grasp on reason, new lines appear in the spaces between her fingers. Her hands curl into claws around the new letters: ARE YOU MAD AT ME?

And Laura is lying on her side on the ice crooning to a carved question from a dead little boy: “No, baby, no, sweetheart, never. Never. Never.”

When she finally drags herself to her feet, there is a long, shallow indentation in the ice from the warmth of her body, and pink light seeps over the horizon. Her body is stiff and cold, and there have been no more messages but those first two, but there is a smile on her face as she walks back to the house.

Sana emerges from the bedroom with crusty eyes and mussed hair as Laura tiptoes up the stairs. “Were you up all night?” she hisses, and Laura shrugs. “Well, I hope you got your head clear. You can have the bathroom first; I need to go make the baby a bottle.”

“Thanks,” says Laura, and Sana gives her a look that cuts deep, probing for insincerity under that solitary syllable. Whatever she finds, she grunts, and brushes past Laura onto the stairs.

Laura turns the shower on as cool as she can tolerate and stands beneath it as long as she can. The more alive she feels, the more distance stretches between her and Christopher. She wants that space to shrink down again, to a few narrow inches of ice. A distance measured in inches is still too far, but it’s better than the entire universe.

She ignores Sana’s first bangs on the door, but when Sana shouts that she’ll be late for work, she finally kills the flow of water and reaches for a towel. Her fingers, still half numb from her night on the ice, only start to tingle with life when she finally steps out and begins to rub herself dry with a towel.

Her office at the back of the hospital lab is a welcome refuge from home. No noise here, except the distant chatter of the technologists out front and the regular whir of the pneumatic tube. Reports to write and biopsies to result: this one cancerous, this one benign, this one missing margins and in need of re-sectioning. No patients to see today, and Laura has mastered the art of speaking to the techs as little as can be politely managed. Right now she can only deal with small chunks of humanity: a twenty-millimeter cube of breast tissue, a fraction of a gram of liver, a two-minute update on a test result from Dave or Xue.

When she arrives at home, both Sana and the baby are napping: Ifrah in her swing and Sana sprawled along the length of the couch. Dark rings are smeared under her eyes, and a half-eaten bowl of instant soup cools on the floor beside her. Her full, hard breasts stretch the fabric of her stained shirt, either she or Ifrah will wake soon to make sure the baby gets fed. The puckered, soft flesh of her belly peeks out from under the hem of her shirt, too, a sight Laura is both disgusted by and grateful for. Sana has carried both of their children. To Laura, the development of a fetus, pushing and groping for space inside its mother’s viscera, is too much like the growth of a tumor, unseen and unknowable and somehow obscene.

She slips out the back door without a sound.

There are more words etched into the pond today. Laura is almost running by the time she gets close enough to read them: DO YOU MISS ME?

She gets down to her knees more carefully today than yesterday, afraid of breaking the ice under her weight. “I miss you more than anything. You took my heart with you when you left us.” Can he hear her? Laura seizes a stick poking up through the snow, but it’s too soft to scratch the surface. Panic sets her heart thumping wildly in her chest as the question melts back into the ice, but then new shapes form. I MISS YOU TOO, MOMMY.

The words pour out of Laura then, memories of family weekends and long vacations, favorite meals, books shared under the covers on quiet Saturday mornings. And of that fearful diagnosis, the one that Laura understood long before either Sana or Christopher could.

When she finally lapses into silence, the pond is as blank as the cloudless sky. The words skitter out a line at a time, scattershot with hesitation. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.

And Laura kisses, just ever so briefly, the frozen surface of the pond, as if she can force her love through the layer of ice with the pressure of her lips.

Sana is on her hands and knees beside the couch, scrubbing spilled soup out of the carpeting. She looks up at the creak of the door as Laura steps inside. “There’s dinner in the fridge,” she says. “I didn’t know when you’d be home. Did you...” The rag twists between her hands. “Did you have a good day at work?”

“It was fine.” Ifrah is on her belly on a blanket on the floor, grunting as she works to lift her head off the floor to watch what Sana is doing. Laura puts a teddy in front of her so the baby has something to look at as she walks past to the kitchen.

She takes a plate of cold morgh polou with her into the office. Out in the living room, Sana is reading to the baby, one of those tiresome books with an ounce of story stretched over a pound of pages. Laura shuts the door and sits down at the computer, where she opens a private browsing session.

There are thousands, millions of hits for people claiming to have been contacted by the dead, but Laura can’t find anything comparable to her experience. Sad, desperate people reading messages from lost loved ones into lost-and-found objects, oddly-timed sounds, piles of soggy tea leaves. She closes tabs one by one until she’s only left with a blinking cursor on an empty search engine field. She types: how to bring back the dead.

Sana is already in bed by the time Laura turns off the computer and trudges upstairs. She unbuttons her pants and slides out of her bra in the hallway before sneaking into the bedroom and slipping beneath the covers. But Sana rolls over anyway, putting her mouth beside Laura’s ear. “I’m worried about you.” Her whisper is too soft to disturb the baby, but blunt enough to batter at Laura’s heart. “I know this time of year is hard for you. It’s hard for me, too.”

“I’m fine.” She could tell Sana about the pond. She could tell Sana what she saw on the Internet. She doesn’t. This secret is all hers, twisting darkly in the corners of her heart. “We’ll all be fine. I promise.”

“Laura, I think you should—”

“You’ll wake the baby.” Laura knots her hand in the blankets and pulls them with her as she turns onto her side. The warmth of Sana’s body lingers behind her, and then she curls away from Laura, turning toward the corner where the bassinet rests.

A pink-fingered dawn is reaching through the blinds when Laura wakes. Her alarm won’t go off for two more hours; she turns it off and crawls out of bed anyway. The blankets are tangled around Sana, who has been up and down feeding the baby during the night. Laura tucks a flap of the comforter over her wife’s bare feet, and pulls jeans and a sweater from the pile of clean laundry on the dresser before slipping out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

A greeting is waiting for her on the surface of the pond. GOOD MORNING MOMMY.

She sits cross-legged in front of it and traces each letter with one gloved fingertip. “Good morning, baby,” she says, and yawns curling steam out into the morning air.

YOU’RE TIRED.

“Yes. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

BECAUSE OF THE BABY?

Laura flinches. Neither of them has made any mention of Ifrah till now, nor Sana either. “No ... no more than usual. I was up late, that’s all. We don’t have to talk about the baby. I have something I want to tell you about.”

But the words on the ice drive all the air out of the lungs, all the air out of the space around her. DID YOU HAVE HER AS A REPLACEMENT FOR ME?

No, thinks Laura, and her mouth silently shapes the word. But her finger traces a different word on the surface on the ice: YES.

There is no answer from the pond. Laura shifts as the cold gnaws at her ankles. “We thought ... we thought we needed someone to take care of. To keep us from falling apart without you. She doesn’t fill the hole that you left.” And Ifrah isn’t enough to keep Laura and Sana from falling apart, either, but Laura can’t make herself say that aloud. “We missed you so much. We were so lonely.”

I’M LONELY TOO.

Tears burn Laura’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. But baby, listen, I have an idea, I was doing some research, on how we can be together again.”

YOU’LL COME WITH ME?

“No...” Laura drags the back of her hand across her face, trailing tears and snot. “No, honey, I think it’s possible that I can bring you back here. To live with us. Me and Mama Sana and—and the baby.”

COME WITH ME. The words repeat themselves: COME WITH ME. COME WITH ME. COME WITH ME. The lines crisscross and fold back on themselves until they are unreadable.

“Christopher!” The palm of a tiny hand slams into the ice right beneath Laura’s knees, making her scream. She scrambles backward off the ice, falling elbow deep into the snow just as the ice cracks under the place where she was sitting. “Stop!”

The words vanish, leaving only the white lightning-strike pattern of cracks behind.

Laura stands alone in the yard with her arms wrapped around herself until the sun heaves itself up over the horizon. Then she puts her head down and hurries back to the house.

She spends the day at work responding to Xue and Dave in odd monosyllables. Her queue of specimens grows and grows while she buries herself in a new set of web searches, fruitless ones. When she looks up, the lights are off in the front of the lab and she is alone. There’s no amount of research that can give her the answers she’s asking for, and there’s nothing on the Internet that can make her accept what she already knows in the pits of her heart.

The house is dark when she comes in: no cries from Ifrah, no kitchen clattering or TV noise. She finds Sana in the office, scribbling on a pad of paper. The grocery list, maybe, or a list of chores for her and Laura to ignore. Laura clears her throat. “I’m going out.”

Sana’s head bobs up, and a tremulous smile swims onto her face. “Okay,” she says. “Everything is going to be all right, Laura. You know that, right?”

“Sure.” Laura looks away. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

She makes one stop before going out to the pond. She stands at the water’s edge, and the weight in her hands reassures her that what she is doing is right.

MOMMY?

Laura hefts the axe and brings it down into the ice.

The impact judders her arms up to the shoulders. The impact crater left by the axe head is like a broken mirror, reflecting spiderwebs of words: MOMMY NO, MOMMY NO, MOMMY NO. She raises the axe again, brings it back down, chops until she can see gray water between the floating chunks of ice. She is in water up to her knees as she reaches the center of the pond, her feet are numb. Everything is numb. But she keeps working until a scream splits her in half.

It’s not the child’s scream she expected. It’s the scream of a woman grown. She turns to see Sana, clutching a shawl around her shoulders with one hand and holding the baby carrier in the other. She’s staring at the axe in Laura’s hands. “What did you do?”

Laura fumbles her way into a lie about being afraid of the ice growing thin and the neighbor’s kids falling through. But Sana’s eyes are wide and unseeing, and the words die in Laura’s mouth. “What did you do,” Sana repeats. “What did you do?”

She drops the carrier and runs into the pond. But not toward Laura, and Laura’s name is not the one she cries out as icy water splashes up to her knees, to her thighs. Ice floes in miniature batter around her waist, deeper than this little fish pond has any right to be. Laura reaches out for her, but Sana chooses instead the embrace of the water. She disappears beneath the surface.

Laura climbs up onto the bank. The ripples in the water grow still. The broken bits of ice tinkle gently together. In her carrier, Ifrah pumps her little red fists and wails.

But the pond is silent.

END

“A Seduction by a Sister of the Oneiroi” is copyright Hester J. Rook 2017.

“The Pond” is copyright Aimee Ogden 2017.

Assorted dog noises are copyright Finn, Rey, and Heidi, 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “Nostalgia” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam.

]]>Hello! This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have another GlitterShip original and a ...Hello! This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Today we have another GlitterShip original and a poem. Our poem today is "A Seduction by a Sister of the Oneiroi" by Hester J. Rook, and our original story is "The Pond" by Aimee Ogden.

If you enjoy this story and would like to read ahead in the Summer 2017 issue, you can pick that up at glittership.com/buy for $2.99 and get your very own copies of the winter and spring 2017 issues as well.

Finally, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is still on sale in the Kindle and Nook stores for $4.99, and you can pick up the paperback copy for $17.95.

Hester J. Rook is an Australian writer and co-editor of Twisted Moon magazine, a magazine of speculative erotic poetry (twistedmoonmag.com). She has previous prose and poetry publications in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Liminality Magazine, Strangelet and others. She's on Twitter @kitemonster and you can find her other work on her site http://hesterjrook.wordpress.com/.

A seduction by a sister of the Oneiroi

Hester J. Rook

The night is velvet warm, mosquito pricked. There is prosecco through my tongue and pear juice sticky down my wrists. Her mouth is sugar rich and cream softened, velvet dipped in moonlight. “We are goddesses already,” she is wine voiced and dusk cloaked, autumn leaves behind eyes translucent as cathedral glass. “My heart is wraithlike sour, bitter as lemon rind and my realm soft-surreal and afraid. But you you taste of marzipan at sunset earthen-toed and iron scented, like a storm. A goddess already.” She ties back her dream-soaked curls and lights up each star, palm raised high and fingertips aflame. “Come back with me.” And, fizzy-tongued and plum sweetened, I do.

Aimee Ogden is a former science teacher and software tester. Nowadays, she writes stories about sad astronauts and angry princesses. Her work has also appeared in Apex, Shimmer, and Cast of Wonders. Aimee lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where you can find her at the gym, in the garden, with a faceful of cheese curds at the local farmer's market, or, less messily, just on Twitter: @Aimee_Ogden.

The Pond

by Aimee Ogden

Laura almost misses the first message.

A screaming match with Sana has driven her out into the frost-rimed evening. The baby’s cries and Sana’s frustrated shushing chase her across the yard; Ifrah is not an easy infant like her brother was. Laura and Sana’s relationship is not an easy one like it was back when Christopher was born, either.

Laura stops to cram her skis onto her feet only once she is far enough away to shut out the sounds from the house. Her only illumination comes from the headlamp clipped to her hat; the moon hides behind thick, dull clouds. It would have been so easy to race past the windswept pond without a second glance. But the headlamp glints on the dull frozen surface, and two stark words etched beneath catch and hold her eye: HELLO MOMMY.

Snow crunches when she hits her knees beside the pond. Her ankles twist under the torque of the skis, but she is paralyzed by the cruelty carved into those two words. Her heart throbs in her chest. Which of the neighbor’s teenage children could have, would have done such a thing?

In spite of herself, she reaches out and puts one hand on top of the words. Through her thin gloves, she can’t feel the ridges that the prankster’s knife should have left in the ice. Impossib]]>

I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran Anyuwe is not explaining policy. Miran Anyuwe is bleeding from a head wound, drops falling tap-tap-tap on the boarding ramp of our ship, the sound oddly amplified by the geometry of the cramped docking bay bulkheads.

“I’m looking for a ride out,” they say. They are not supposed to be on Idhir Station. They are supposed to be three jump points away, heading the accession talks, guiding Ohandar’s joining of the Alliance.

I uncross my legs and get up to my feet—one quick, practiced motion. I bow my head briefly. “Esteemed, I will inquire.”

[Full transcript after the cut.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip e [...]

]]>The Need for Overwhelming Sensation

by Bogi Takács

I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran Anyuwe is not explaining policy. Miran Anyuwe is bleeding from a head wound, drops falling tap-tap-tap on the boarding ramp of our ship, the sound oddly amplified by the geometry of the cramped docking bay bulkheads.

“I’m looking for a ride out,” they say. They are not supposed to be on Idhir Station. They are supposed to be three jump points away, heading the accession talks, guiding Ohandar’s joining of the Alliance.

I uncross my legs and get up to my feet—one quick, practiced motion. I bow my head briefly. “Esteemed, I will inquire.”

[Full transcript after the cut.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 44 for August 22, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of "The Need for Overwhelming Sensation" by Bogi Takács.

Content warning: Sex and BDSM

Bogi is an agender trans author who can be found talking about other people's writing at http://www.bogireadstheworld.com and @bogiperson on Twitter.

The Need for Overwhelming Sensation

by Bogi Takács

I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran Anyuwe is not explaining policy. Miran Anyuwe is bleeding from a head wound, drops falling tap-tap-tap on the boarding ramp of our ship, the sound oddly amplified by the geometry of the cramped docking bay bulkheads.

“I’m looking for a ride out,” they say. They are not supposed to be on Idhir Station. They are supposed to be three jump points away, heading the accession talks, guiding Ohandar’s joining of the Alliance.

I uncross my legs and get up to my feet—one quick, practiced motion. I bow my head briefly. “Esteemed, I will inquire.”

They nod. Their smile intensifies just a little, as if someone repainted the lines of their mouth with firmer brushstrokes.

I dash inside, my entire torso trembling with fear of the sudden and the unexpected. I take a sharp corner and crash into Master Sanre. They steady me with both hands.

“Iryu, breathe.”

I gasp.

“Slower. In and out.”

Their presence calms me. It only takes a few breaths.

“Iryu, look at me.”

I stare up at them. Their eyes narrow, the lines of silver paint that I so carefully applied to their face in the morning crumple like spacetime clumps around a planet. The glass beads in their hair clack together.

“Explain what’s wrong.”

I mutter, still tongue-tied from the sudden fright. Miran Anyuwe is outside and injured. Miran Anyuwe wants to hire us. Miran Anyuwe—

“Ward the ship, then come outside. I will talk to them.”

They hurry outside, boots clanging on metal.

I exhale again. I focus on the power inside me, direct it outside and into the wards. My remaining tension eases up. I’m not missing anything—I will be able to look at my master’s sensory logs later. I turn around and return to the open airlock.

I stop for a moment as I see the two of them together. They look so alike, and the resemblance goes beyond gender, appearance, the light brown of their skin and the dark brown of their braids. They have the same bearing, the same stance. It’s clear both are used to effortless command. Miran Anyuwe commands an entire planet. My master commands only me and the ship.

Is my master more powerful?

It’s not about the head wound, it’s not about the desperate urgency in Miran Anyuwe’s gestures. It involves something innate that goes to the core of being.

I knew my master was powerful. But did I overestimate Miran Anyuwe?

Both of them look up at me, nod at me to come closer. I approach, unsettled.

Miran Anyuwe is unwilling to explain. Details are elided, skirted around. Anti-Alliance isolationists, terrorist threats, an attack on Miran Anyuwe’s life. I don’t understand why they abandoned the talks and went back to their planet—surely they knew they would present a better target there? Were they trying to pull off some populist maneuver? I find myself dismayed that my thoughts are moving along less than charitable pathways, but Miran Anyuwe clearly has something to hide.

I tell myself it is only the bitterness of disillusionment. But did I really want them to be that glorified, polished figurehead from the political news, that semi-deity with a charmingly pacifist stance?

These ships do not run on pain; that’s a misconception. They run on raw magical power. It can be produced in any number of ways. Pain is just easy for many people.

Of course, it’s a matter of choice. Even those who find it easy don’t have to like it.

I like it. I need it. If I go without, my body protests. Maybe it’s about the need for overwhelming sensation; I’m not sure.

As I’m checking the equipment, I wonder why I’m having these thoughts—I think because of a foreigner on the ship, a potential need to explain. For all the newscasts and analysis articles, I know little about Ohandar. The focus is always on Miran Anyuwe, and the progress of the negotiations. I wonder if that means the Ohandar isolationists have already won.

I slow my all too rapid breathing. There will be time to get agitated later. First to get away from the gravity wells, to a relatively clean patch of spacetime while still on sublight. Then we can decide—the client can decide. Miran Anyuwe has all the reputation credit in the world to pay. Of course, my master would nix all the dangerous maneuvers. I just hope Miran Anyuwe isn’t up to something wrong.

I tug on straps, lean into them with my full bodyweight. They hold. They always hold, but it’s best to check.

I undress. A lot of magic leaves through my skin surface—I’d rather not burn my clothing. I never have, but it heats up and that makes me worried. I’ve already adjusted the ambient temp a few degrees higher, so I’m not feeling cold.

The chamber is mostly empty—my master is a minimalist, and I like this: distractions do not help. The lines carved into the bulkheads—carefully, by hand—are the same off-white as the bulkheads themselves. One day it would be pleasant to have wood, but I like this surface too: it reminds me of ceramics, some of our tableware from down planetside.

Master Sanre is setting up the frame: pulling it out from storage inside the bulkheads, affixing it. They work quickly; we’ve done this so many times.

I say I’m ready. I’m eager to begin; we were stuck on Idhir Station for days upon days, our time consumed with administrative tasks. I’m starved for a run, and we have the client of clients, safely ensconced in one of the bedchambers, but probably not yet asleep. Out on the corridor I felt their jitters, but this chamber is the best-warded on the ship. No distractions inside, no stray power leaking out and causing disturbance outside.

I lie stomach down on a fixed-position pallet and my master straps me in. I wriggle a bit— everything seems to be in order. I smile up at them and they run a hand along the side of my face, smooth down my curls. I close my eyes for a moment and sigh a little. They chuckle.

“So dreamy. What would you do without me?”

“I would be sad?” I volunteer, my voice thin and little.

They pat me on the shoulders.

They start with their bare hands, slapping, grabbing and pulling at the flesh. It is all quite gentle. I relax into the restraints and my muscles unknot. Whatever Miran Anyuwe is doing, I couldn’t care less.

Heavier thuds on the sides of my back. I can tell the implements by feel. I wish we would go faster—aren’t we in a hurry?

Master Sanre fusses with the tool stand. They turn around, change stance. A whizzing sound through the air, a sharper pain. I yelp. Sound is good, it also helps release. We go on. On. My back burns. I groan at first, then scream. Tears and snot. I—

“What’s going on in here?”

Miran Anyuwe. How— The door was supposed to be locked—

Did you forget to lock the door? My master sends me a private message.

It locks automatically once the frame is disengaged, I think back over our connection. It should be encrypted, but now I am uncertain about everything.

Miran Anyuwe strides up to us. “What are you doing?” Their voice wavers with anger and fear. I try to crane my head to see—I can’t, but Master Sanre disengages the straps with a quick thought-command. I sit up, trying to suppress the shaking caused by the sudden halt. I’m not sure where to put all the magic. I clumsily wipe my face and hug myself. Why is Miran Anyuwe so angry?

They stare at each other. I wonder if I ought to say something.

You may speak, my master messages.

“Powering the ship,” I say. My voice is wheezier, wavier than I’d like. This voice is not for strangers. My vulnerability is not for strangers. Not even for Miran Anyuwe.

“You did not say you would do that!”

Do what? I am baffled. “Powering the ship?”

They glare at Master Sanre. “You are hurting him!”

“Em,” my master says. “Different pronouns.”

Miran Anyuwe looks startled; they know they of all people are not supposed to make assumptions. I feel they are gearing up to apologize, then thinking better of it. Some of their anger dissipates.

They hesitate—I’ve never before seen them hesitate, then turn to me. “It will be all right,” they say.

“Could you please leave?” I am trying to be courteous, but the magic is pushing against my skin. This is not a point to come to a sudden stop. What is their problem?

“I am not letting them torture you,” they say, with a sudden shift of tone into media-proof reassurance.

I wish I could hit Miran Anyuwe. With so much magic, it is dangerous to even think of violence. I force down the thought. “They are not torturing me. Please.” I wave my arms. My motions are increasingly jagged—I know I’m losing control. “I need to release the magic, please, could you please leave? It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be in here.”

“I would listen to em if I were you,” my master says quietly. “If you’re not leaving, I will escort you out.” They step forward.

Arms around me. I feel very small. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I’m here. I’m here for you.” Holding me tight. “You can let it go now. I will guide it. You can let it go.”

I howl, convulsing, weeping. The magic tears at my insides as it rushes out. My master will have things to repair—I am suddenly angry at Miran Anyuwe for this, but then the thought is swept away; thought itself is swept away.

Outside, the ship is moving.

My master is so furious they have excess. They run up and down the length of the room, then just groan and push magic into the structure.

“Next time I’ll have to do that out the airlock or I’ll just fry the controls,” they say. Calm enough to sound cynical. They shake their head. Clack, clack. “I’ll fix you up once I’m steadier,” they say. “It didn’t seem to leave lasting damage. I would’ve torn them in half!”

I seldom hear my master talk about violence. But I understand the source of their fury now.

I query the systems. Where is Miran Anyuwe? Pacing the corridor outside, apparently.

I close my eyes and lay back. I don’t think I can face the client. I don’t think I can face anything. How could things go this wrong?

They cover me up. I wriggle into the warm, weighty duvet, grab armfuls of it. Some things are eternal, unchanging. My master briefly caresses my head, fingers playing with my short curls. My muscles loosen up. I can feel that some of the tension leaves my master, too. I turn my head, peek out from the blanket to gaze at them. They look like Miran Anyuwe; but they also look like me, and this time I just want to focus on the latter. People have mistaken us for relatives before, and there is something deeply comforting in this.

“There was a malfunction.” They frown. “Don’t forget that Miran Anyuwe is a magical person, too, if not so powerful as either of us.”

The message, unspoken: Be on your guard.

I’m back in our room, still resting, the soft upper layer of our mattress bending obediently around my aching flesh. Master Sanre repaired what could be repaired right away, then set the rest on a healing course. I’m halfway to sleep, drifting in a white-fluffy haze, when the alarm sounds.

I get out of bed, hastily dress, walk to the control room like a baby duck unsteady on its legs. Teeter-totter. My master looks up at me, and so does Miran Anyuwe. I feel they had been arguing.

We’re still on sublight, and moving much slower than our target velocity due to the unwelcome interruption. I grimace, try to gather my wits. The warships must be after Miran Anyuwe; we ourselves don’t have enemies.

I sense my master’s gaze upon me. “How soon can we jump?” they ask.

“I can start preparing right away,” I say. I know the healing won’t be able to run its course, and I know that’s also what my master has been thinking. But if we are hit by a mass-driver, there won’t be any healing in the world to repair our bodies.

Master Sanre tries to hail the warships. No response, just another shot. Deliberately missing? Intended as a warning?

Then a third, aimed head on—

My master jumps up from their chair. “We need to get out now!”

They tackle me, hug me to themselves, push me down on the floor. My face flattens against the cold floorboards, my mouth opens. I gasp for breath.

“Now!” they yell, and even without the familiar trappings, my body responds instantaneously, my mind rushes through the preparations of matter transposition.

Magic rises in me, floods me, streams outward, suffuses the ship. I scream with the sudden expansion of awareness, the pain of white-hot power running along my spine, I keen and convulse as my master holds me down, grabs hold of my power to direct it outward—

—we jump. Arriving clumsily at our target destination, off the ecliptic, too close to the system’s star. I cough, close my eyes to better focus on the sensors. I try not to focus on my body. Something feels broken, not a bone or two but a process itself; something biochemical knocked askew.

Master Sanre rolls to the side, still holding me close. We remain there for a few breaths, ignoring Miran Anyuwe. We get up, holding onto each other.

Very few people can make an entire ship jump as rapidly as I do; my magic simply has an uncommon shape that’s well-suited for this particular task. Miran Anyuwe doesn’t know this. Our pursuers don’t know this.

“I’ll request a permit right away,” I say.

“I’ll do it. You get ready to jump again.”

My master is still trying to get through to an Alliance comm station when the warships show up. I can’t even make it to the power chamber. Pain unfurls, spreads out as I raise power; I flail and claw against my master who holds me strongly. The ship jumps.

They drop me down on the pallet, and the shape, the sensation identifies it to me. I’m in the power chamber. Straps are pulled, tightened across my body.

“Can you do it? Can you do it again?”

It takes time to realize my master is speaking to me. I nod, teeth gritted.

“Can you do it?” Miran Anyuwe asks them.

“Oh—” My master suppresses a curse. “Don’t bother about me!”

“You’re shaking.”

“Of course I am—” They raise their voice and it trembles. Suddenly I am worried: I need to bring this to a close, I can take the magic, but what about my master?

I grapple with words for a few moments before I am able to speak. “I can jump us to Alliance space without a beacon.”

“Without a permit? It’s illegal,” my master protests, but inwardly I know they are already convinced. The Alliance goons ask first, shoot second, not the other way round like the jockeys of these warships are wont to do.

“I’d take Alliance Treaty Enforcement over these people any day,” I say, knowing full well that they have magic-users just like me. I used to be one of them. I wouldn’t be able to get out of harm’s way fast enough. More effort and I won’t be able to do anything at all, but one more jump I can manage, even against the gradient, against the odds— The warships are back.

I strain against the straps and clutch at my master, scream at them to pull, pull because I can’t generate enough power in time, and after their initial hesitation they do it, and I can feel myself pulled apart, space itself getting fragmented and torn, unraveling at the edges—

We are in orbit around Andawa, second-tier Alliance population center. We know this planet well. It’s easy for us to jump here.

It will take the Alliance more than a moment to mobilize their forces. Andawa is peripheral, but not so peripheral as to be without protection. The enforcers will simply take a bit longer to arrive, jumping in probably from Central.

My master undoes the straps, their fingers working as their mind is busy hailing Planetside Control. I try to stand, fall into their arms. Miran Anyuwe is silent this time, but I can tell they are shaking, and not just with the side-effects of back-to-back jumps with no jump point, no beacon.

I make a motion toward them, then slowly collapse and fold into myself as my legs give way. My master topples down on the floor together with me, cradles my head.

The enemies can’t quite jump into our ship—the wards still hold. They board the old-fashioned way, with lots of clanging and metal being cut. Where is the Alliance? Why are they so slow?

Before my vision gives in, I see black-clad commandos stream into the room. I see Miran Anyuwe crouch on the floor next to me, taking cover behind the box of equipment.

I don’t understand what the commandos are saying. I only understand what my master is thinking.

On their signal, I roll to the side, bump into Miran Anyuwe, my arms around them. They smell of marzipan. I hold fast. Then I fall through space, through time, through awareness itself.

Sharp, prickly grass. The sunlight scrapes at the back of my head when I open my eyes; I close them and shiver despite the warmth of Andawa’s sun. I grapple with the earth as I try to get if not upright, then at least on all fours. I can’t even pull myself up on my elbows—I lose balance, smear my face and arms with rich dark dirt. Andawa is a garden world.

Miran Anyuwe is speaking, has been speaking for a while now. I can’t make sense of the words. They reach under my armpits and pull.

Gaps in continuity.

Miran Anyuwe dragging me on some backcountry path and yelling at me, preaching that I shouldn’t live a life of slavery. I try to say that I am not a slave, I serve my master voluntarily, without coercion. My speech turns into mush—my mouth is too uncoordinated—and in any case Miran Anyuwe refuses to listen. I can’t walk unassisted, I can barely parse sentences and yet they are preaching to me, about how I ought not to be running away from freedom but toward it.

Who’s running away, I want to say, but my systems checks are failing one by one, my biosensors are screaming.

Words. Words. More words. Completely opaque.

I’m lying on the slightly curving floor—a ship’s bay? Entirely unfamiliar beyond the reassuring calmness of Alliance-standard. Miran Anyuwe is sitting next to me, their left hand on my forehead. I try to bat it aside; my entire right side spasms. I gasp, force steadiness on my breath, ignore all the warnings.

Miran Anyuwe speaks—the sentences elude me. I want to turn and see, observe the crowd whose presences I can feel pressing on my mind, but I can’t move; even my motions to shoo away Miran Anyuwe are little more than twitches.

Someone, a sharp bright voice, finally: “…a medical emergency, Captain, we need to intervene.” I miss the answer. Then the same person, slower, pausing after each word: “Captain, you need to allow me.”

Miran Anyuwe withdraws; I sigh in relief. Someone crouches down next to me and oh I know this mind-template, so familiar I fight the urge to grab and latch onto it, in this sea of incomprehension where in every moment an eddy or whirl can cause me to drift away. Ereni magic-user, delegated to the Alliance; they don’t call it magic, they have their own words… “Ssh.” A touch on my chest. “You are almost completely drained. I will help you if you let me.”

I murmur something, hoping it will be enough, hoping the intent would be clear. I reach to the Ereni’s hand on my chest, but my fingers fail to connect. I’m not quite clear about where my body parts are situated at any given moment.

Warm egg-yolk-yellow power floods into me through their hand and my cells drink it in, desperate for nourishment. I can move. I can live.

Speaking doesn’t come as fast. Where is my master, I think at the Ereni now that my thoughts can move forward, Ismymastersafe?

ETAanothertwenty-fiveminutes, the Ereni thinks in my head. Weareshortonpeopletojumpthemhere.TheIsolationistshavebeenapprehendedandarebeingejectedfromAlliancespace. I look up at the Ereni—their appearance matches my mental impression of them. Black, thick-set, gender-indeterminate. They are still clenching their jaw. I know it takes a lot of effort to get exact numbers across—this is not a high-magic area. I nod, appreciating the effort. They hold my hand, squeeze it. Just as I understand them, they also understand me, through the shared demands of magic and the hierarchies it often creates.

I sigh, look around. Across the room, a short, sharp-featured officer in the uniform of Alliance Treaty Enforcement glares at—me? No, at Miran Anyuwe. My interface works again, the error messages recede. The officer is a man, by the name of Adhus-Barin, with about half a dozen more lineage-names after his first. A nobleman from the Empire of Three Stars, one of the more socially conservative members of the Alliance.

“Maybe we can try this again,” Adhus-Barin says. He looks about as angry as a noble in a mere Alliance captaincy position can be expected to look, his auburn-brown skin darkening further. His systems are probably frantic, trying to avoid a stroke. “You might wish to rephrase what you’ve just told me.”

Miran Anyuwe seems proud as ever, but as my body processes the influx of magic, I can already tell the politician radiates fear, apprehension and… brokenness, somehow. An impression of someone caught in the act.

“I was escaping from the Isolationists who were after me,” Miran Anyuwe says, “I wouldn’t have made it to Alliance space if not for these excellent people.” They nod at me. Am I supposed to smile, murmur thanks? I remain silent. They continue: “One of whom doesn’t even understand the Code of Life and Balance, I must say.”

What is that? If I hear one more word about how I’m supposed to be some kind of slavery apologist…

Adhus-Barin also glares at them. Is he waiting for Miran Anyuwe to incriminate themselves?

The politician continues, shifting pace as if realizing they are no longer talking to their home crowd. “As you are no doubt aware, the Isolationists oppose our negotiations to join the Alliance, negotiations that I am leading…” They pause, uncertain for a moment. “Between two rounds of talks, I returned to Ohandar, where I was summarily attacked, and after my attempted escape, even my security detail deserted me at Idhir Station, so I had to seek out a private vessel for help…”

“Your security detail betrayed you?” Adhus-Barin turns oddly mild, almost gentle. I don’t have to pry into his thoughts to sense a trap being readied.

“They were all Isolationists, they turned against me—” Voice rising. Miran Anyuwe is losing their cool.

“What could I have done? The talks were almost over and the funds—” They halt midsentence.

I stare. At Adhus-Barin smiling, his thin mouth turning up in almost a sneer, at Miran Anyuwe standing statue-still, with only stray tremors breaking through their rigidity.

The security detail going unpaid. Isolationists going unpaid.

“Thank you,” Adhus-Barin says, “I do believe this will be enough.”

As if a dam breaking through, Miran Anyuwe starts blabbering, words tumbling over each other. The statue falling apart. “The Alliance has to understand, the Alliance knows—isolationist sentiment has always been strong on Ohandar, we had to show the populace that isolationism was extremism, we had to—”

“So you backed the Isolationist movement, steered them into violence,” Adhus-Barin says, one step away from gloating. “Created and funded your own rivals, so that you could point a finger at them and say, we are not like those people. So that you could revel in the position of the peacemaker.”

“The Alliance knows! Don’t deny it! The Alliance knows!”

“May I?” the Ereni says, then waits for the captain’s nod. “The Alliance knows. That doesn’t mean the Alliance assents.”

“Exactly as Officer Enisāyun has it,” the captain nods at them again. “Undesirable allies often incriminate themselves during the accession process, as we have found.” He says it as if the Empire was innocent of all possible wrongdoing, and I wonder if Miran Anyuwe knows how the Alliance had taken its present shape, what had prompted the member states to create Treaty Enforcement, back it with real power and threat. I sneak a look at Enisāyun, and the Ereni glances back at me, shrugs.

Miran Anyuwe mutters word-fragments, all sense lost in overwhelming anger, directed at us who thwarted the plan. We all gaze upon the spectacle. I pull my personal wards tighter around myself in case Miran Anyuwe lashes out.

Officer Enisāyun asks to speak again, then gestures toward me. “The esteemed leader might wish to thank the young māwalēni here for saving their life.” Adhus-Barin makes a face. The meaning is clear—he would rather the politician would have perished, murdered by their own erstwhile allies. Let alone called esteemed leader, but then again the Ereni are fond of formality… and its ironic flipside.

Enisāyun smiles softly. “We will make sure that the young māwalēni receives all due payment for services rendered—though from whom might be uncertain at this point…” Miran Anyuwe collapses.

“I thought they were warded from all outside—” A voice from the back of the Alliance crowd, then another, “I warded them!”

A door seal hisses, and my master dashes in, the familiar clang of boots on ship-metal. “Were they threatening anyone? I felt they might be threatening someone, so it seemed safer to shut them down.”

“Excuse me?” Adhus-Barin seems utterly lost. It’s that kind of day, the Ereni thinks at me and I suppress a chuckle.

“I have a policy of not interfering with clients’ minds, but they severely disrupted my ship, interrupted the jumping procedure—”

Officer Enisāyun is shocked in the back of my mind.

“—so I thought it would be safest to plant my safeguards on them just in case. They had no defenses to speak of.”

An understatement, recognized by everyone present as such. When did my master have time to do this? I consider the events of the day, fail to find the exact moment. An intervention performed off-hand, with a stray thought…

As Adhus-Barin regains his calm and goes through the motions of the cleanup, organizing transport for Miran Anyuwe to Alliance Central where they will no doubt have to endure another round of castigation before getting booted out of Alliance space, my attention is elsewhere. I knew my master was more powerful, I tell myself, but I understand at the same time that it’s not about power—or, rather, that power entails more than raw control. It entails being straightforward, honest, upright.

“The Need for Overwhelming Sensation" was originally published in Capricious #1 and is copyright Bogi Takács, 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original.

]]>The Need for Overwhelming Sensation
by Bogi Takács
I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran ...The Need for Overwhelming Sensation

by Bogi Takács

I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran Anyuwe is not explaining policy. Miran Anyuwe is bleeding from a head wound, drops falling tap-tap-tap on the boarding ramp of our ship, the sound oddly amplified by the geometry of the cramped docking bay bulkheads.

“I’m looking for a ride out,” they say. They are not supposed to be on Idhir Station. They are supposed to be three jump points away, heading the accession talks, guiding Ohandar’s joining of the Alliance.

I uncross my legs and get up to my feet—one quick, practiced motion. I bow my head briefly. “Esteemed, I will inquire.”

[Full transcript after the cut.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 44 for August 22, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of "The Need for Overwhelming Sensation" by Bogi Takács.

Content warning: Sex and BDSM

Bogi is an agender trans author who can be found talking about other people's writing at http://www.bogireadstheworld.com and @bogiperson on Twitter.

The Need for Overwhelming Sensation

by Bogi Takács

I am staring at the face from a thousand newscasts—the gentle curve of jaw, the almost apologetic smile. Miran Anyuwe is not explaining policy. Miran Anyuwe is bleeding from a head wound, drops falling tap-tap-tap on the boarding ramp of our ship, the sound oddly amplified by the geometry of the cramped docking bay bulkheads.

“I’m looking for a ride out,” they say. They are not supposed to be on Idhir Station. They are supposed to be three jump points away, heading the accession talks, guiding Ohandar’s joining of the Alliance.

I uncross my legs and get up to my feet—one quick, practiced motion. I bow my head briefly. “Esteemed, I will inquire.”

They nod. Their smile intensifies just a little, as if someone repainted the lines of their mouth with firmer brushstrokes.

I dash inside, my entire torso trembling with fear of the sudden and the unexpected. I take a sharp corner and crash into Master Sanre. They steady me with both hands.

“Iryu, breathe.”

I gasp.

“Slower. In and out.”

Their presence calms me. It only takes a few breaths.

“Iryu, look at me.”

I stare up at them. Their eyes narrow, the lines of silver paint that I so carefully applied to their face in the morning crumple like spacetime clumps around a planet. The glass beads in their hair clack together.

“Explain what’s wrong.”

I mutter, still tongue-tied from the sudden fright. Miran Anyuwe is outside and injured. Miran Anyuwe wants to hire us. Miran Anyuwe—

“Ward the ship, then come outside. I will talk to them.”

They hurry outside, boots clanging on metal.

I exhale again. I focus on the power inside me, direct it outside and into the wards. My remaining tension eases up. I’m not missing anything—I will be able to look at my master’s sensory logs later. I turn around and return to the open airlock.

I stop for a moment as I see the two of them together. They look so alike, and the resemblance goes beyond gender, appearance, the light brown of their skin and the dark brown of their braids. They have the same bearing, the same stance. It’s clear both are used to effortless command. Miran Anyuwe commands an entire planet]]>

GlitterShipYesNo00:36:5525fullEpisode 43: “In Search of Stars” by Matthew Brighthttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-43-in-search-of-stars-by-matthew-bright/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-43-in-search-of-stars-by-matthew-bright/#commentsMon, 21 Aug 2017 10:32:13 -0400GlitterShiphistorical SF filmhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-43-in-search-of-stars-by-matthew-bright/Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 43 for August 20, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

It’s a little bit late (oops!) but we finally have the Summer 2017 issue of GlitterShip available for you to read and enjoy! As before, all of the stories will be podcast and posted on the website over the next couple of months. However, if you’d like to get a head start reading the stories and support GlitterShip, you can purchase copies of the Summer 2017 issue on Amazon, Nook, or right here at GlitterShip.com.

Looking forward, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is now available via Amazon, and Barnes & Noble in both print and electron [...]

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 43 for August 20, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

It's a little bit late (oops!) but we finally have the Summer 2017 issue of GlitterShip available for you to read and enjoy! As before, all of the stories will be podcast and posted on the website over the next couple of months. However, if you'd like to get a head start reading the stories and support GlitterShip, you can purchase copies of the Summer 2017 issue on Amazon, Nook, or right here at GlitterShip.com.

Looking forward, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is now available via Amazon, and Barnes & Noble in both print and electronic editions, as well as for direct purchase CreateSpace(print) and GlitterShip.com/buy (electronic)—which also means that copies will FINALLY go out to the people who so generously supported the GlitterShip Kickstarter way back in 2015.

Today, we have a GlitterShip original short story by Matthew Bright, as well as a poem by Charles Payseur.

Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, The Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews, contributes as short fiction specialist at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

becoming, c.a. 2000

by Charles Payseur

he gives himself to the internet a piece at a time, in chatrooms and message boards and fandom pages, like burning prayers for the next life. he finds himself there as cronus must have found his children, a terrifying future fully formed and armored that he is desperate to consume.

every day he leans into his screen, close enough to brush his lips against the humming glass, feels the snap of static on skin, and pulls away diminished, the sum of his parts no longer quite equaling the whole. he asks friends what they think but all of them are online now, scattered like ghosts, a great ocean of scared boys in nice houses and with each question, each reassurance, each word of a language they build to map their desires, they all find themselves that much more gone.

he is barely a whisper when he puts the last piece of himself into a comment on a garak/bashir slashfic

more plz

Matthew Bright is a writer, editor and designer who constantly debates which order those should come. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Tor.com, Nightmare Magazine, Harlot, Steampunk Universe amongst others, and he is the editor of anthologies including Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt, Myriad Carnival: Queer and Weird Tales from Under the Big Top and the upcoming A Scandal in Gomorrah: Queering Sherlock Holmes. He pays the bills as a book cover designer in Manchester, England, and you can find him on twitter @mbrightwriter or online at matthew-bright.com.

In Search of Stars

by Matthew Bright

It starts with a secret place, as many stories do.

On the outside, it is a laundrette. The printed letters on the plate glass are peeling, but still legible: Whites. Below it, a list of numbers is scraped away, leaving the cost of a wash a mystery. Occasionally, I pass it in daylight. During the day, the door is propped open by a rickety stool, and I peer inside. It is filled by graying women with rumpled, dishcloth skin who talk quietly amongst themselves about their children and their husbands.

Once, I dare to take my clothes there to wash. An innocent errand, I reason; no shadow of suspicion could fall on a man simply doing his laundry. This does not prevent the women from eyeing me as if the mere presence of a man amongst them is suspect. To compound this, I am unprepared, and am forced to swap a nickel for a palmful of powder, a foolish error met with sad tuts.

As I empty the powder into the drum, I study the door in the corner.

It takes me several weeks to get the courage to return at night. The front door is no longer propped open advertising itself, but it hangs ajar, distinctly not closed. Inside it is dark, and quiet—none of the machines are awake. But men pass in and out of the doorway with regularity, briefly spilling light from the door in the back across the machines; they are not carrying clothes.

I do not know whatever password it is that would grant me access, and neither do I have the will to ask. Perhaps were I to be bold—simply walk up to the door in the back of the laundrette and go in—I might be able to talk my way upstairs. But when my foot breaks the curb to cross the street, my stomach churns, noxious with fear, and I step back.

Tonight, it is cold, and so I cross the alley to the diner. The waitress there—a pretty girl, like the small-town ones from back home—knows me by name now. “Usual, Albert?” she says, and I enjoy being someone who has a “usual.” I imagine that perhaps she does too—this is not the sort of diner with regulars. I sit in a booth by the window and drink coffee, covertly watch the laundrette, and the men that come and go. I don’t know what I imagine is on the other side of the door, but I know I want to find out. Perhaps the waitress knows—it seems unlikely that she works here night after night and doesn’t have some idea what is going on opposite. The thought makes me uncomfortable, but I remind myself there is nothing wrong with a man drinking coffee—or a man washing his clothes.

There is someone waiting outside the laundrette. He leans against the window-frame, making insolent eye-contact with any man who enters. His boldness—starkly opposite to my own reticence—tugs at me; I dowse the feeling with coffee and look at the chipped table-top. The jukebox is playing music—rock and roll, tinny and weak. It clanks and whirs when the records are changed.

After a while, I can feel—in that skin-pricking way that comes from a sense other than sight or hearing—that the man is looking at me. I chance a look, and meet his eyes.

The waitress is serving an old man in the corner, her back turned. I gather my coat, and step out into the cold. At the end of the road the city exhales a blare of cars, distant music, police whistles, but its cacophony falters at the corner. Our street is still like midwinter, and the man waits for me in the middle.

We exchange words. It doesn’t matter what they are. Suffice it to say, I have spoken similar words before; I am a man who knows their real meanings, just as he.

The walk is a few wet streets away. He talks, and I interject enough answers into the conversation to keep it from stagnating. I keep a proprietary distance from him, glance nervously at the darkened windows around us, any one of which might contain a watcher who knows my face—I saw that scientist from round the corner, they might say, and you’ll never guess what? He tells me he is a musician—saxophone, because all the other boys in this city are playing guitar, he says. I picture the pads of his fingers stroking the keys, and the cold reed leeching the moisture from his bottom lip.

I ask him if he’s ever played inside, meaning the secret place above the laundrette, hoping he’ll say yes so he can describe it to me. He shakes his head. “I’ve never been in,” he says. We are at the foot of my building, and I fumble in my pocket for keys. He leans in close to me. “Have you?”

“I don’t know the password.”

A second, then he laughs. “Password? You don’t need a password.” He looks me up and down. He is mentally reconfiguring me from a man of experience to a naïf who imagines cloak-and-dagger, film-noir secrecy. He hesitates.

“Come in,” I say.

I let him climb the stairs first. With the door closed, my stomach spins in anticipation, as if permission is granted by the cloak of privacy—nobody to see us now, not even if I were to pull his clothes off right here on the stairs. But I don’t—I jam my hands in my pockets and follow his shadow upwards.

At the top, he looks around the detritus of my apartment, and asks me what I do. “I’m an artist,” I say, which is not exactly a lie. He looks for a light-switch, but I point him through the door to the bedroom. I pull dustclothes over my work, then follow him. He is already naked on the bed, his clothes a gray pool by the nightstand.

He tastes of something I can’t describe.

Afterwards he rolls to the cold side of the bed, pulling the damp sheets with him. He looks appraisingly at me, and he is re-evaluating me all over again—perhaps tallying up the number of men that added up to the expertise I had displayed. He looks at me for some time. An endless parade, he must conclude—all those other men.

My chest congeals into a thick, black, furtive shame, soul-deep.

I offer him a cigarette, but he refuses, rolls onto his back and closes his eyes. At first the lids are tense, like a child pretending to be asleep after curfew, and then they relax. He breathes slowly.

I place the cigarette between my lips, but leave it unlit. Tentative dawn is creeping over the horizon, silvering the rooftops. I left the curtains undrawn when I left earlier, the window fully open—not a conscious choice, but it's fortuitous: the window grates on opening, loud enough to wake someone sleeping.

I arise quietly, pad into the other room, and pull aside the dustclothes. The paint is where I left it, viscous and silver in its vat. Its clean, sterile smell stings my eyes. I open a drawer, select the right brush—hog bristle, which is soft and delicate, and will not wake him.

On the bed, I kneel, apply the paint gently. I cover him in reverse order of the skin touched by my tongue and fingers, turning it warm pink to cold blue. By the time I have covered his chest and thighs, he is lighter, rising up from the bed. When I cover his arms, they rise above him, as if he is reaching for an embrace. I run the brush to his feet.

When I am finished, he floats a foot above the bed, rising. When I lay my hand on his belly, he is light as a feather, and my touch guides him across the room as if he were a leaf on a still pond. He passes below the lintel soundlessly, not waking even when his steady ascendance nudges his shoulder against the frame.

My hands on his cheeks anchor him, like a child clutching a balloon that tugs against its string. His feet lift, inverting him. His eyes open when I kiss him gently on the lips. He smiles, and I release him.

He turns as he floats up, alternating blue then pink in the watery dawn, and then is higher than I can see any longer, beyond my sight with all the others.

I lie down on the bed, pull the still-warm bedsheets around me, and light my cigarette. The smoke rises in clouds, and vanishes as if it was never there.

The story continues with the morning after, as many stories do.

Firm block capitals in my diary prevent from lying abed long into the afternoon: I have an appointment to make. I meet Eugene in the foyer of the Mayfair. I wonder exactly how much Eugene has been told about my present circumstances, and whether his choice of venue is a deliberate statement of his success. It would be just like Eugene, though it would be intended without malice.

He presses whiskey into my hand, and greets me as if we have never been apart. “Such a surprise when old Selwyn told me you were in LA!” he says. He ushers me to an armchair, and gestures for the discretely hovering waiter to refill our glasses. Eugene has aged well—with a thin, fashionable moustache that I am pained to admit suits him well. I briefly wonder if our mutual acquaintance—Selwyn Cavor, the starchily British professor who pushed us through five years of boarding school—is pushing for something other than the reunion of old school friends; it is he, after all, who told me about the laundrette.

But then Eugene tells me about his wife—an ice-queen blonde, so he says, by the name of Marilyn, though aren’t all the blondes called Marilyn these days? Perhaps Selwyn is not as calculated as I imagine.

“So, how are you ticking, Mister C?” he asks—habitually, for this was how Eugene had opened nearly every conversation between us since we were both eleven and meeting for the first time in a draughty dormitory. “Finally cracked and come out chasing stars in the city of angels, have we?”

I try to smile warmly, and shake my head. “Not exactly,” I say, and try to explain something about my work. I tell him about the two publications that took my reports. I fail to mention that my laboratory consists of a worktop hauled from a garbage tip, and basins purloined from the ruins of a barbers that had burnt down. Those particular details do not jibe well with the foyer of the Mayfair, or the two-hundred-dollar whiskey.

“And what is it you’re trying to build?” he asks, though his attention is on the whiskey bottle as he tops it up.

“Space travel,” I say, though this hardly covers it.

“Smart boy!” Eugene says. “Space—they’re all at it. Give it ten years, and we’ll get there ourselves. But I tell you what though—Hollywood is damn well going to get there first.”

I think of my saxophonist, turning lazily on the edge of the atmosphere. Out loud, I point out that Hollywood has been going to space for some time. I remind him of the Saturday afternoons we would sneak from school to the nearest town, and the showing in particular of Woman in the Moon, sucking down ice cream floats and salted caramels.

He waves it away. “Oh, Hollywood has moved on since then. Special effects!” He is practically shouting, and heads are turning. I shrink in my seat. “That’s what the studios are excited about. And they want everything to be two hundred per cent accurate at all times. Suspension of disbelief, and all that. That’s why they hired me—an ‘expert consultant,’ that’s me.”

He leans forward. I realize he is already a little drunk.

“Do you know what one of the directors asked me—he asks, ‘What does space smell like?’”

“Goodness,” I say. “Why would they need to know that? It’s only film.”

“Some new technology they’re working on—a full experience, you know? Squirt the audience with water, shake the seats, all that lot. And they want to use scent. It’s what we’ve all been waiting for—not only can you watch cinema, you’ll be able to smell it.”

He looks pleased with himself. The ice clinks in his glass as he waves it.

“What does space smell like?” I ask.

He considers. “Gunpowder,” he says. “By all accounts.”

Later, I go to the laundrette. The gray women look at me once when I enter, then disregard me. I am an insignificant little man encroaching on their world, and not worth the energy of observation when there are hampers of clothes to be washed. I run a finger along the grimy edge of a washer, and my fingertip comes away blackened. It satisfies me; in a perverse way, the laundrette, with its washed-out women and secret doorways, makes me feel scrubbed clean of all the gilt decadence Eugene has subjected me to that day.

I do not look at the door in the back, although I itch to go through it.

This visit is an inoculation: a brief sojourn in the laundrette during the day and then I will not be tempted to return after dark. I will remain in my apartment for the night hours; a small amount of exposure that defends against a greater illness.

I empty the bag of clothing into the drum. At the bottom are the saxophonist’s discarded clothes. Turning away so as to go unobserved by the women, I press his undergarments to my face and inhale. I half expect the smell of gunpowder but of course that is absurd—his clothes remained with me. I smell only cotton, soap, and the faint linger of sweat.

I drop them in the drum, and pay my cents. The machine starts up, spiralling our clothes together in a wet rush.

In the Lucky Seven diner, I order coffee. By the time it has arrived, I know the inoculation is not enough; I will be returning tonight.

The waitress squeezes into the booth opposite me. “I have a half-hour break,” she says.

“Right,” I say, not quite sure why she’s telling me this.

She bites her lip; I recognize this from movies, the coquettish seduction. Only hers is awkward, as if she isn’t used to being this forward. Perhaps she isn’t: she works amongst bottom-squeezes and drawled darlin’s all day; I doubt she ever has to ask. “I have half an hour,” she says. “I was thinking you could take me home and fuck me.”

I notice a grease-spot on her lapel, just a few inches above her bare breast. It is just to the left of the name-tag: ‘Marilyn’ in uncertain capitals. It makes me think of Eugene’s ice-blonde wife, and his big job up amongst the stars. Eugene would say yes without hesitation.

I could just say no, I tell myself, and then, inoculation.

Afterwards, she looks around the detritus of my room and asks what I do. “I’m an engineer,” I tell her, which is not exactly a lie, and go to wash myself in the dirty sink. She remains on the bed, smoking the cigarette I offer her. Naked, I had been able to feel a week of diner grease on her skin. She tasted of the bitter coffee at the bottom of a pot, and my usual expertise had deserted me.

I wonder if she washes her clothes at the laundrette. I feel the usual nausea arising, though it is a different kind; this is a physical nausea in the pit of my stomach, as if I have swallowed something rotten.

“Good old American filth,” Eugene said to me earlier, as we were leaving the Mayfair, him paused on the curb to hail a cab, me turning my coat collar up for the long walk home. “I’m tired of all the glamour. You know—mansions, cars and movie stars. The whole city’s coming down with a case of shallow—even my Marilyn’s picking it up; won’t fuck without doing her makeup first.”

He wanted me to take him out in my parts of the city, with all the implications of what my part of the city entailed. “Well—you’re here amongst it all, aren’t you? Think it’s about time you and I went out on the town. I want some squalor, you know what I’m saying?”

I imagine he’d be pleased with me right now.

I walk her back to the laundrette with five minutes of her break to spare. On the way, she tells me that she picked me because I didn’t ask. All day long, men suggest things, demand things of her. But I never did, and she liked that. I ignore the bitter irony. We part in the middle of the street, her kissing me quickly on the cheek.

In the washing machine drum, I find my white clothes stained blue. I hold up a once-pale vest and wring pastel water from it. One of the gray women looks at me and shakes her head. I bundle my clothing back into my knapsack, and leave the saxophone player’s articles—dark blue shirt, pants, underwear—in a sopping pool at the bottom of the lost and found basket.

Two weeks until the itch to visit the laundrette again outweighs awkwardly encountering Marilyn in the Lucky Seven.. Sitting at my work-bench, listlessly tracing paint along a series of pencils so that they float and turn in the air, I reason with myself. If I am to risk facing the woman with whom I have had less than satisfactory relations with—and not seen since—then it must be for a greater gain than watching from afar.

The queasy light of the diner is an oasis that beckons—but tonight I ignore it, although I look long enough to realize that Marilyn is not to be seen. It does nothing to calm me; my hair, still damp from the cold shower I took before leaving, hangs in clammy lumps against my forehead. I feel unwashed—wrapped up tight against the night, I am immediately overheated, sweat springing up in the folds of my body. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to touch me.

“There is no password,” the saxophonist told me. No secret or phrase: just the confidence to walk through the door.

I end up in the diner, breathing heavily to calm my pulse. There is a stinging pain in the palms of my hands that spreads up my arms and worms its way into my ribcage. The laundrette stares balefully at me across the street.

An older waitress materializes beside me. She is dumpy and string-haired. Her name-tag says Marilyn. Eugene was right—every woman in Los Angeles…

She fills my cup and putters on to the next booth to serve a hulk of a man who I think I faintly recognize. He is looking down at a newspaper spread on the table, his face lost in a tangle of beard, but when Marilyn the Second departs, he looks up at me. He is round faced, and despite the beard, oddly boyish. “Not brave enough, huh?” he says to me.

He is more discreet than the saxophonist; he maintains a respectful distance from me as we pass through the streets, hangs back as I open the door, and remains three steps behind me as I climb the stairs. As soon as we cross the threshold, the gentleman vanishes—his hands are on me, yanking away my coat and scrabbling at the clothes beneath. With my shirt tangled over my head he is already moving to touch my body before I am free; his fingertips are rough on my skin, and as his mouth skates down my body, his beard scratches like the wire wool I use to scrub away paint. His teeth nip at my belly.

I back away, lead him to the bedroom. He disrobes as he follows, revealing a heavy-set body swathed in hair, and a stubby penis peeking from the shadow cast by his bulk. The pale light from the window sweeps around the heavy sphere of his stomach, and I am struck by an absurd image of a fast-motion film of light’s passage around the moon that I dimly remembered from a visit to the planetarium with Selwyn.

He pushes me onto the bed and straddles me. He is commanding, guiding my hands where he wants them, tangling my fingers in the hair on his chest and thighs, and then as he pins my shoulders with his knees, thrusts my hand behind him where my fingers slide, sweat-slicked, into him. I open my mouth to receive him and for a second I picture myself outside my own body looking down on us—the same position as the watchers I imagine at my windows. The image is clear: this beast of a man, crouched ursine on his haunches over me, my head and shoulders lost in the dark shadow between his legs.

Afterwards, he kisses me.

He does not go as easily as the saxophonist. Firstly, he awakens. None of the others have ever done this. His legs are already several inches off the bed, the room suffused with the anodyne hospital smell of the paint. My mistake is in selecting my brush; still sore and tender, I find poetic justice in selecting the largest, roughest of them.

Secondly, he struggles. I doubt he comprehends what I am doing to him, but he has awoken in a panic to sensations he doesn’t understand, and so he lashes out like the animal I pictured. He strikes a blow across my face, and I fall to the floor, tasting blood in my mouth. The time for gentle artistry is past: I upend the tub. It coats his chest, tiny bubbles bursting amongst the strands of my hirsute canvas. There is blind panic in his eyes as he rises, spittle at the corner of his mouth turning blue where it mixes with the paint. He flails, claws at my sheets, but they can’t prevent his ascent and simply rise with him, a useless tether.

I jostle him out of the window, which stands open as always. He clings to my bed-sheet and we reach an impasse—him upside down, fist wrapped tight around the cotton and me at the other end, pulling back with all my strength. For a minute, we remain connected.

Then his fingers open, and he soars up, up to where the air smells of gunpowder.

“Pineapple!” says Eugene. “Goddamn pineapple. Can you believe it?”

Six weeks pass—six weeks in which my frantic scuffle squashes the itch to visit the laundrette, though the image of a door opening to a crowd of men waiting for me slowly recurs nightly in my dreams. Six weeks in which I bury myself in work, in which I dodge the landlord knocking for rent, and in which I write three-quarters of a paper on the gravity-negating properties of an as-yet-unnamed viscous solution of my own devising. Six weeks, and then Eugene.

“Gunpowder is too hard to synthesize, apparently, and anyway—it’s not like anyone’s going to know. So according to the head honchos of Paramount Pictures, space will smell of pineapple.” Eugene is on his third Singapore Sling, and already blurring into intoxication. He speaks at great length about his Hollywood consultation business. He tells me I should come advise on engineering, build robots for the flicks. He doesn’t understand why I’m mouldering away in a poxy flat in the cheap end of town. I try to explain what I’m working on—tell him about my three-quarters-written paper—but he doesn’t listen. He starts talking about space flight again.

In each bar we go to a pattern repeats: the girls flock at first to his expensive suit, gold watch and big tips, and then, when his generosity has dried up and he has done little beyond leerily grope a behind or two, they ghost away to search for more forthcoming targets. And at each bar, he complains that the place is ‘too swanky’ or ‘too bogus’ and demands I take him somewhere real.

Deep in a whiskey glass in a honky-tonk bar that still carried more than a whiff of speakeasy about it, I watch Eugene flirt with a sour-faced woman leaning against the bar. She is lit by neon, and has a look similar to his: rich, but slumming it for the night. He won’t pick her, I know, but flirtation is a habit of his. Even in a single-sex boarding school, he had never had much trouble finding women where he needed them—a couple of the maids, girls from the town. Sneaking back into the dormitory at night, he would describe his latest sexual exploit to me in a low whisper, and I would stiffen under the covers.

One night he claimed to have conquered one of the schoolmistresses—new to the school, and on temporary assignment. One of those long evenings in his study I relayed Eugene’s story to Selwyn who laughed quietly, and said, “I don’t doubt. Frightful, really—students and teachers.” We laughed together, conspiratorial.

Not for the first time, I wonder why Selwyn has thrust Eugene and I back into each other’s lives.

If I focus, I begin to wonder if Eugene’s heart is really in it tonight. He’s effusive with everyone we meet, expounding upon his personal theories of life, love and pleasure, and the opportunity to sneak off and spend himself in a furtive tumble has presented itself on multiple occasions. And yet he seems to be dodging every offer, returning to me with freshly charged glasses. As we descend into that strata of intoxication in which profundity insists itself in half-complete sentences, I wonder if perhaps Eugene fears the same as I: that in the post-orgasmic chill the squalor of a back-alley screw loses its grimy glamour and becomes something furtive and shameful instead. And so he postpones it as long as possible—perhaps indefinitely.

Eventually, there are no more bars to go to—or none that will allow two such stumbling fools entry. Early dawn is pricking the horizon, and, like a magnet, I draw us to the Lucky Seven. My waitress is there—Marilyn the First—glimpsed through the kitchen hatch but I am too drunk to care. Besides—it has been two months.

We collapse into a booth. Eugene rests his head on the table. I lean against the glass; it is cool and soothing. Across the road, I cannot tell if the laundrette is open or closed—I am too unfocused to make out if the door stands open or not. I suppose even such a place as Whites closes.

“Usual?” I squint up at her. She doesn’t sound upset. This is good.

Eugene, hearing a female voice, rears up. He strikes what I imagine he believes is a charming smile. “Darla!” he says. “How pleas—pleas—pleasant to meet you.”

I blink. “Darla?”

She taps her name-badge.

“I thought your name was Marilyn?”

She leans in close, ruffles my hair, matronly. “No, darling. I forgot my badge, had to borrow one. But at least you remembered my name—I’m flattered.”

Darla. Somehow the name changes her. Marilyn is a girl daintily upset when a man does not call her the morning after. Darla takes a man home to screw because she wants to.

She leaves to serve the only other customer in the diner, down the opposite end of the window. I lean into Eugene, and tell him—in a whisper that is almost certainly not really a whisper at all—about what Darla and I did in my bed. I don’t know why I did it: I have never been one to brag, but recasting our limp splutter of an encounter as erotic exploit gives me a fraternal thrill I have rarely felt.

Eugene grips my wrists and shakes them victoriously. “Albert, my man,” he says. “I knew you had it in you.”

For a second I see me as he does now: earthy man of the people, slipping it to waitresses on a nightly basis. And then the image bursts like over-inflated bubble-gum as I look past Darla. She is bending over, pouring coffee, and behind her is a noticeboard. Protest march, singing lessons, artist seeking model, poetry reading and MISSING. Below it a photo of a hulking man, round-faced and boyish despite the beard.

Darla sways past us again. “You boys had a good night, then?”

Eugene reaches out a hand to her, pulls her back to sit on his knee. His fingers snag on her sash. “Darlin’, not nearly good enough. Not yet…”

For the poster to be here in the Lucky Seven, he must be a regular. We’ve all been there, he said, as if he too had sat for long hours in this diner, getting up the nerve to cross the road. And then there is Marilyn and Darla, who see every man and every face.

Darla looks at me. It isn’t a look asking for help, to rescue her from my lairy friend, just a calmly assessing look. Eugene’s fingers make it clear what he wants.

I do not ask. I know what she likes.

“I get off in half an hour,” she says.

The story ends with a decision, as many do.

Darla leaves, and I return to the bed as if she is still there, a cold ghost between Eugene and I. Her female presence granted permission: for our naked bodies to share the same space, for my fingers to touch him, provided mine were not the only ones.

I wonder if this is where he wanted the night to go: his life, so drearily decadent, that the only thing to jolt him out of his drudgery is the taboo touch of a man. Perhaps he had marked me out as an easy target—the sexless boy from school, the one who spent a bit too much time with Professor Cavor.

I realize the room is silent. His snoring has stopped. When I look at him, his eyes are open.

Afterwards, I anchor us both to the bed with the sheets, wrapped around our wrists and fixed loosely to the bedpost. I paint him first, until he has risen, tipped on his side, free of gravity but strung by one rebellious limb to the ground. The alcohol in his veins that deadens him to the feeling of my awkward brush-strokes. He hovers above me, eyes closed, like a statue.

Then, disjointed with my off-hand, I coat myself. I float to meet him, the front of our bodies pressed together, lips close enough to kiss.

I wrestle the knot loose, and we are released. I wrap my arms around him, and press my face into his chest. It is difficult to guide him across the room to the window—I have to kick off against the walls and the ceiling, as one does in deep water.

My feet alight on the windowsill. I push away.

Light breaks across the city. If my phantom watchers in the windows opposite are looking, they will see us as we rise into the sky, one man clinging tight to another as they ascend like balloons that have slipped from your grasp, until the atmosphere becomes rarefied and thin, and breath freezes before our faces. I catch a glimpse of the sun rising over the edge of the world before I close my eyes and rise up, to where the air smells of gunpowder, and men are waiting for me.

END

“becoming, c.a. 2000” is copyright Charles Payseur 2017.

“In Search of Stars” is copyright Matthew Bright 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a reprint of “The Need for Overwhelming Sensation” by Bogi Takács.

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 43 for August 20, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with ...Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 43 for August 20, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

It's a little bit late (oops!) but we finally have the Summer 2017 issue of GlitterShip available for you to read and enjoy! As before, all of the stories will be podcast and posted on the website over the next couple of months. However, if you'd like to get a head start reading the stories and support GlitterShip, you can purchase copies of the Summer 2017 issue on Amazon, Nook, or right here at GlitterShip.com.

Looking forward, the GlitterShip Year One anthology is now available via Amazon, and Barnes & Noble in both print and electronic editions, as well as for direct purchase CreateSpace(print) and GlitterShip.com/buy (electronic)—which also means that copies will FINALLY go out to the people who so generously supported the GlitterShip Kickstarter way back in 2015.

Today, we have a GlitterShip original short story by Matthew Bright, as well as a poem by Charles Payseur.

Charles Payseur is an avid reader, writer, and reviewer of all things speculative. His fiction and poetry have appeared at Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, The Book Smugglers, and many more. He runs Quick Sip Reviews, contributes as short fiction specialist at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together and can be found drunkenly reviewing Goosebumps on his Patreon. You can find him gushing about short fiction (and occasionally his cats) on Twitter as @ClowderofTwo.

becoming, c.a. 2000

by Charles Payseur

he gives himself to the internet a piece at a time, in chatrooms and message boards and fandom pages, like burning prayers for the next life. he finds himself there as cronus must have found his children, a terrifying future fully formed and armored that he is desperate to consume.

every day he leans into his screen, close enough to brush his lips against the humming glass, feels the snap of static on skin, and pulls away diminished, the sum of his parts no longer quite equaling the whole. he asks friends what they think but all of them are online now, scattered like ghosts, a great ocean of scared boys in nice houses and with each question, each reassurance, each word of a language they build to map their desires, they all find themselves that much more gone.

he is barely a whisper when he puts the last piece of himself into a comment on a garak/bashir slashfic

more plz

Matthew Bright is a writer, editor and designer who constantly debates which order those should come. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Tor.com, Nightmare Magazine, Harlot, Steampunk Universe amongst others, and he is the editor of anthologies including Clockwork Cairo: Steampunk Tales of Egypt, Myriad Carnival: Queer and Weird Tales from Under the Big Top and the upcoming A Scandal in Gomorrah: Queering Sherlock Holmes. He pays the bills as a book cover designer in Manchester, England, an]]>

My hired horse threw a shoe between Bristol and Bath, and by the time the wearying business of getting another nailed on was complete the shadows were growing long and the wind was sharpening its knives.

“It’s kind of you to put me up,” I said, jingling pennies in my pocket to encourage such generosity. In a town so small it had neither pub nor inn, I considered myself fortunate to be offered the chance to sleep in the blacksmith’s loft.

My hired horse threw a shoe between Bristol and Bath, and by the time the wearying business of getting another nailed on was complete the shadows were growing long and the wind was sharpening its knives.

“It’s kind of you to put me up,” I said, jingling pennies in my pocket to encourage such generosity. In a town so small it had neither pub nor inn, I considered myself fortunate to be offered the chance to sleep in the blacksmith’s loft.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is "The Passing Bell" by Amy Griswold.

Amy Griswold is the author (with Melissa Scott) of DEATH BY SILVER and A DEATH AT THE DIONYSUS CLUB from Lethe Press. Her most recent work (with Jo Graham) is the interactive novel THE EAGLE'S HEIR from Choice of Games. She lives in North Carolina, where she writes standardized tests as well as fiction, and tries not to confuse the two.

The Passing Bell

by Amy Griswold

My hired horse threw a shoe between Bristol and Bath, and by the time the wearying business of getting another nailed on was complete the shadows were growing long and the wind was sharpening its knives.

“It’s kind of you to put me up,” I said, jingling pennies in my pocket to encourage such generosity. In a town so small it had neither pub nor inn, I considered myself fortunate to be offered the chance to sleep in the blacksmith’s loft.

“Glad to, if you’ve got the coin,” the blacksmith said. “Only the missus is particular in her way about knowing something about strangers who are going to sleep under her roof. What’s your name, and what’s your age, and what’s your trade, good man? For she’ll ask me all three.”

“Rob Tar is my name, and my age is twenty and six,” I said. “And I’m an able seaman aboard the Red Boar out of Bristol. My girl Minnie lives in Bath, and I’m on my way to keep her company a while until we sail again. I’ve never claimed to be a good man, but I’ll be no trouble to you, and I can pay you for supper and bed." In fact I had three months’ pay, most of it stuffed down my shirt to pose less temptation to thieves. “Will that satisfy your lady?”

“It should,” Mister Smith said, with a sheepish sort of shuffle that would have looked more at home on a boy than a big man with biceps like hams. “You understand, she’s a particular sort of woman.” He seemed to notice for the first time that his dogs were circling me suspiciously, as if waiting for the cue to set their teeth into an intruder. “Get by, dogs, we’ve a guest tonight.”

He led me into a kitchen where a warm fire was glowing and went aside to speak with the presumed mistress of the house, a young wife but hardly a merry one, her dun hair matching her dun dress so that she looked faded, as if washed too many times. I was beginning to get some feeling back into my feet when she came over with bread and salt fish.

“That ought to do for a sailor,” she said, and I nodded polite thanks, though in truth I’d eaten enough fish while at sea that I’d have preferred the toughest fowl or most dubious of hams. “If you’d come a week ago, we’d have had nothing for you but pork.”

“Too bad,” I said, and tried not to think about crisp bacon.

At that moment, a dull music split the air, the heavy tolling of a steeple-bell. It rang twice, paused, rang twice again, and then began a doleful series of strokes. It was the death knell, and I put on my most solemn face, thinking how awkward it was to be a stranger in a small town at such a time. “Who do you suppose has died?”

“I expect no one yet,” Mister Smith said. His wife said nothing, only stood with her mouth pressed tight together, listening to the tolling bell. In a small town such as this, I could well believe they kept up the old custom of ringing the bell as soon as the parson heard news of a death, but to ring it before the death seemed perverse.

“Surely there aren’t any hangings here,” I said. A condemned prisoner was the only sort of man I could think of whose death might be predicted with certainty beforehand. “I suppose if someone’s lying deathly ill . . .”

“We’ll know by morning,” Mister Smith said. “The bell never lies, you see—” He broke off abruptly as the bell finally came to the end of its dull refrain and seemed at a loss for how to go on.

“Twenty-six,” Mistress Smith said, and when I turned at her tone I saw that her face had turned gray with some strong emotion I didn’t understand. “Nine strokes to tell a man, and twenty-six to tell his age. Don’t tell me I miscounted.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” the smith said. He twisted the leather of his apron in his hands, looking from one of us to the other. “It might be best if you found your bed now.”

“The hour is growing late,” I said, because I misliked his wife’s expression, and had developed aboard ship a keen sense of how the wind was blowing.

The man picked up a lantern and led me back out into the chill dooryard. The ladder up to the loft above the forge was rickety, and he held the lantern to light my way. “You mustn’t mind my wife,” he said. “Our troubles here are nothing to do with you.”

Well, only the most incurious of born lubbers could have refrained from asking the question after that. “What did she mean about the bell?”

“There’s somewhat wrong with our church bell,” Smith said. “The parson rings it in the ordinary way after every death in the town, but you can hear it all through town the night before.”

It took me a moment to parse that. “You mean the bell rings before someone dies?”

“The bell sounds before someone dies, but the parson doesn’t ring it until after. It’s been that way as long as anyone in town can remember. You mustn’t think we’re entirely ungrateful; when it tolls for your old uncle, you can go round and see him beforehand and say your farewells, you see? But it’s hard when it tolls for a child, or a man in his prime with little chance of passing away peacefully in his bed.”

The light from the lantern shifted, as if his hand were less than steady on its handle. Outside its circle of light, black branches bent against a dark sky that was beginning to spit frigid rain. “This wouldn’t be a tale spun to frighten travelers, would it?” I asked. “For I’ve heard them all in my time.”

“I swear it’s the plain truth,” Smith said. “And it’s a bad night for traveling, but I’ll understand if you’d rather be on your way.” He paused a moment and then added, “It might be for the best. You heard what the bell told.”

“I’m willing to take the chance,” I said. “I’ve heard more frightening stories than this.”

“It’s no more than the truth,” the man said, but with resignation, as if he were used to skepticism from strangers. He hung up the lantern, and turned abruptly to go. “Your horse is shod and I’ve got your coins for the night’s lodging, so I expect we’re square, and there’s no more that needs to be said.” He tramped out, leaving me to ascend the ladder in no mood to settle down easily to sleep.

I shivered for a while under the thin horse blanket spread over an equally thin pallet, and then realized that the forge and the kitchen of the house shared a common chimney that went up the opposite wall. I made my way over to it, hoping to warm my hands at least, and I heard the mutter of voices through the wall. After a bare moment’s hesitation, I pressed my ear unashamed to the stones, having long profited from such caution.

“Give me the hatchet,” I heard Mistress Smith say, and was abruptly glad I hadn’t balked at eavesdropping.

“You don’t need the hatchet,” Mister Smith said. “I mean to leave it in the good Lord’s hands.”

“You mean you don’t mean to lift a hand yourself to save your life, when it’s you or that stranger who’ll die tonight. Well, you needn’t get your hands dirty if you scruple to it. Just you give me the hatchet, and tell anyone who asks that you slept sound.”

“And what do you mean to say, when the town watch comes knocking?”

“Old Bill? I’ll tell him that I woke at a noise in the courtyard, and came out to see men running away. He’ll set up a hue and cry that will take the rest of the night. You’ll see.” There was a feverish certainty to her voice. “All you need do is leave it all to me.”

“I won’t have it, I tell you.”

“I don’t care what you will and won’t have. You’re not much of a man, it seems, but you’re my man, and I don’t mean to wager your life on the toss of a coin. Give me the hatchet, and don’t you set foot outside until I come back.”

I had only a few moments to escape. I had a knife, which I took up now, and the cover of darkness on my side. For all that, my heart was pounding in my chest; I’ve never been a brawler, nor been much in the habit of fighting with women. I made for the ladder, but before I reached it I heard the sound of footsteps below.

“Do you lie comfortably?” Mistress Smith’s voice rose up.

I thought of feigning snores, but lacked confidence in my own dramatic skills. “Quite comfortably,” I called back down. “I’ve everything a man could want.”

“I thought I’d bring you a hot drink,” she said. “A bit of a toddy to take the chill from the air. Do come down and drink it before it gets cold.”

“It’s very kind,” I said, putting my back to the loft wall and hoping that a swung hatchet wouldn’t go through it. “But I never touch the demon drink, not since I got religion.”

“A sailor who’s an abstainer?” she said. “I never heard of such.”

“It’s true all the same,” I said. “It pleases my girl, you understand.”

“I’ve a blanket for you at least,” she said. “And you can come in with me and fetch a cup of hot milk.”

“Thank you kindly, but I’ll lodge where I am.” I held my breath, and heard the ladder creak as she put her foot on it. It creaked twice more, and then her head and shoulders appeared framed in the doorway and light glinted off the hatchet blade.

I kicked her square in the bosom, though I’m not proud to say it, and knocked her and the ladder both down from the loft. I swung down after her, seeing her sprawled in the straw, unhurt but struggling to rise, and went for the hatchet.

She grasped it as well, her hands clawing at mine, raking them with her fingernails.

“Will you give over!” I tried to shoulder her away. “You’re wrong in what you think. I’m no man of twenty-six.”

“You claim now you were lying?” Her face was close enough to mine as we struggled that I could smell her breath. “There’s a strange habit, for a man to tell lies about his age to everyone he meets.”

Her grip on the hatchet loosened as she spoke, and I tightened my own. “So it would be,” I said. “But I’m no man, and that was the lie I told. That and the bit about the drink, which I admit is a besetting vice. I put on breeches to go to sea, but I’m a woman all the same underneath them, and never more glad of it than today.” I forebore to add that my girl was glad of it too, as I felt under the circumstances it would be taken as cheek.

She laughed in my face. “That’s a nasty lie to save your skin.”

“I’ll prove it if you like,” I said. “If you’ll give over your attempt to chop me up for firewood long enough.”

At that moment, her husband came in, and I shoved her toward him, hoping that he’d catch the hatchet out of her hands. He plucked it away from her with his left hand and tossed it aside, but as he let her go I saw that he had a cleaver in his right hand. I saw the bulging of his shoulders and thought I must know what a chicken felt like at butchering time.

“It came on me that it was wrong to leave the missus to do what must be done,” he said.

“I’ll swear any oath you like, my mother named me Kate,” I said, and reached for the top button of my shirt.

“A wicked wench who’ll dress up as a man can’t complain if she’s buried as one,” the woman said, and I saw a look pass between her and her husband that made my heart sink. “What the parson doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“I’m sorry to have to do it,” Mister Smith told me, but he was lifting the cleaver, and I turned tail and ran.

I heard the clamor of dogs barking behind me, and rethought in a hurry my initial plan to make for the road out of town. I looked about for a tree to climb, and saw none. There was a stone wall at the end of the lane, though, and I went pelting toward it with what sounded like a whole Bedlam of dogs baying at my heels.

They leapt snarling as I scrambled up the wall, but any sailor, lad or lass, can climb like a monkey, and I reached the top of the wall and dropped down on the other side. I was in a little churchyard, but before I could slip away over the wall on the other side, the parson came out to see what was the matter with the dogs, who were still howling in a perfect fury. Though he wore spectacles balanced on his narrow nose, he also had a heavy stick in his hand and looked as if he were willing to use it.

“The blacksmith set his dogs on me,” I blurted out. “I swear to you I’m no thief.”

The parson didn’t loosen his grip on the stick. “I don’t believe Mister Smith is in the habit of setting his dogs on innocent strangers.”

“It’s on account of the bell, the passing bell,” I said, and couldn’t help looking up at the tower that threw its shadow over us both. The bell tower was just a rickety little thing by the measure of city churches, but the pool of gloom it cast over the churchyard seemed heavy and dark. “His wife put him up to it, for she thinks it’s either him or me who’ll die tonight.”

The parson came forward a little, then, and looked me up and down through his spectacles. “I never knew the blacksmith’s age,” he said, as if speaking as much to himself as to me. “I try not to know, you see. But in a town so small, it’s hard not to be aware . . .” He shook his head, and there was something closed in his expression. “I think I had better see you out the gate,” he said.

“The dogs are still out there,” I pointed out.

“That’s really not my concern.”

“And you a parson.”

“I can’t stop what’s to come,” he said. “You must understand that, you must see. I’ve tried, sometimes, when I knew. There was a girl, a child of thirteen . . . I sat up with her all night, in the church, and we prayed together. She wept, and I told her to have faith, that the Lord would protect her. And an hour before morning her fear overcame her, and she rose to flee. I caught hold of her, I demanded she stay, I promised she would be safe. I struggled with her. And she fell, and her head struck the altar steps. And God was silent.”

He reached out and caught hold of my collar to march me toward the gates. My hand rested on my knife, and then I took it away again, not sure if I could bring myself to stab a man of the cloth, even to make my escape.

“I don’t see why you can’t just resolve not to ring the bell anymore,” I said. “If you don’t ring it in the morning . . .”

“I did not ring it that night,” he said, still marching me along, as if by thrusting me out the gates he could banish the memory. “I sat on the altar steps in misery, and at the first light, I heard the bell tolling. It was little Johnnie Boots, the choirboy, who had taken it into his head to ring the bell for me as a kindness, since, as he said, I must have been taken ill.”

He paused before the high wooden gate, and outside I heard an eager chorus of barks, and then the even more ominous growling of dogs who see their aim in sight. “There are some who have called for us to take down the bell,” he said. I silently cheered on “some,” whoever they might be. “But it is the Lord who put this curse on us, and when he judges us free of sin, he will take it away again. When we have been made clean.” His knuckles were white on his stick, and his eyes were on the horizon, as if he saw some horror there I couldn’t see. “I have prayed, but of course my sinner’s prayers have not been answered,” he said. “Pray now, and perhaps yours will be heard as mine have not been.”

I put my hands together, although I had done precious little praying of any kind since I’d taken up my present life. It sat badly with me to beg for my life anyway, like a craven captain pleading for quarter on his knees. Dear Lord, I’ve been a wicked woman but a good seaman, I said silently. You’ve winked at my deceit, and let me live when better men have died. If you care for wicked women, as I’ve heard you did in life, show me one more trick to save my skin.

The parson was reaching for the gate, and I blurted out, “A moment more!”

“You’ve had time for your prayers.”

“A moment to wish my girl goodbye,” I said, and drew out the locket I carried. It was a little tin thing with a half-penny sketch inside, but the boy who drew it had caught Minnie’s laughing eyes, and it was worth a fortune in gold to me. She’d scolded me for going back to the sea, though it was my wages that kept her all the time I was away, and told me at some length that if I drowned she wouldn’t have a single prayer said for my worthless wayward soul.

“You’ve had that as well,” the parson said, and reached for the latch on the gate. I reached again for my knife, wondering if I could stick him without hurting him too much, and what the townsmen would do to me if they caught me after that. Being hanged for stabbing a parson seemed even worse than being hacked apart for nothing.

And then I had it, all at once, like a breath of wind snapping open a slack sail. “One thing more!” I demanded. “I had a traveling companion on the road, another sailor who took ill and died by the wayside. I buried him as best I could, but I’d be easier in my mind if the passing bell were rung for him. His name was Tom, and I know his age as well, for he told me at the end he was born twenty-six years ago to the day.”

The parson stood staring at me for a long moment. “Do you expect me for one moment to believe such a story?”

“Is it any of your business to doubt it?” I asked, and reached into my coat to draw out my purse. “If I had come to you a week ago, would you have questioned whether there was a man named Tom or a roadside grave?”

“I would not,” he admitted. I held out my purse to him, and while I’d like to believe he took it in pure gratitude for the escape I offered him, I can’t say that its weight didn’t figure in his decision as well.

“Then go on and ring the passing bell for poor old Tom,” I said. “For I think I have worn out my welcome in this town, or at least it has worn out its welcome with me, and I am eager to be on the road again.”

I followed him to the foot of the tower stairs, and watched him ascend. I waited until the sound of his steps told me he had gone a full turn of the stairs, and then started up after him, keeping my own steps quiet.

Even after everything that had happened, I was not entirely prepared for what I saw when I mounted to the bell-tower; the parson was heaving on the bell-rope, his back to me, and the bell was heaving as well, the clapper slamming into its sides hard enough that I could see its tremor, but no sound came from the bell, no sound at all. The only sound was the wind, keening through the wide openings on all sides of the tower like a crying dog.

I waited, breath held, until the bell made its final swing and the parson released the bellrope. I scrambled around him, evading his surprised attempt to catch me back, and clambered up onto the beams that held the bell in place. The bell was an old one, and held only by thick ropes, not by a heavy chain; it was the work of a moment to hack the stiff ropes in two.

There was a clamor like brazen hounds baying in hell as the bell came crashing down. It tumbled out the open side of the bell tower, clattering for a moment on its edge and then plunging toward the earth.

“They do say the Lord helps those as help themselves,” I said, jumping down. The parson crossed himself and backed away from me.

“There’s some devil in you, and I’m not sure whether to try to cast it out or thank you for what you’ve done,” he said.

“Call it payment for all the hospitality I’ve had in this town,” I said. “But now I must be away.” I took off down the stairs at a run, and plunged out into the open air.

I stopped short when I saw the bell lying fallen on the churchyard stones. It was cracked and split, crumpled like the body of Mister Smith, who lay fallen beneath it, with his dogs circling round him, cringing now and whimpering.

The parson came out after me, and made the sign of the cross over the dead blacksmith in silence. “He was a good man,” he said after a while.

“I expect he was,” I said.

“You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“Nor will I,” I said, for it seemed the blacksmith had been doomed from the time the bell first sounded, and at least now the bell had rung its last. “But can I have my purse back, then? I expect I can find a man to ring the passing bell for my old mate Tom somewhere considerably nearer home.”

The parson gave me a look as he handed it over that I suppose I well deserved, but what can I say? I’ve never claimed to be a good man, but I am Minnie’s best girl, and she’d been waiting patiently for me to bring her home my pay, and to come back to her safely from the sea.

END

“The Passing Bell” was originally published in Temporally Out of Order and is copyright Amy Griswold, 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

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Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a GlitterShip original.

]]>Episode 42 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!
Support GlitterShip by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/
The Passing Bell
by Amy Griswold
My hired horse threw a shoe ...Episode 42 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!

My hired horse threw a shoe between Bristol and Bath, and by the time the wearying business of getting another nailed on was complete the shadows were growing long and the wind was sharpening its knives.

“It’s kind of you to put me up,” I said, jingling pennies in my pocket to encourage such generosity. In a town so small it had neither pub nor inn, I considered myself fortunate to be offered the chance to sleep in the blacksmith’s loft.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is "The Passing Bell" by Amy Griswold.

Amy Griswold is the author (with Melissa Scott) of DEATH BY SILVER and A DEATH AT THE DIONYSUS CLUB from Lethe Press. Her most recent work (with Jo Graham) is the interactive novel THE EAGLE'S HEIR from Choice of Games. She lives in North Carolina, where she writes standardized tests as well as fiction, and tries not to confuse the two.

The Passing Bell

by Amy Griswold

My hired horse threw a shoe between Bristol and Bath, and by the time the wearying business of getting another nailed on was complete the shadows were growing long and the wind was sharpening its knives.

“It’s kind of you to put me up,” I said, jingling pennies in my pocket to encourage such generosity. In a town so small it had neither pub nor inn, I considered myself fortunate to be offered the chance to sleep in the blacksmith’s loft.

“Glad to, if you’ve got the coin,” the blacksmith said. “Only the missus is particular in her way about knowing something about strangers who are going to sleep under her roof. What’s your name, and what’s your age, and what’s your trade, good man? For she’ll ask me all three.”

“Rob Tar is my name, and my age is twenty and six,” I said. “And I’m an able seaman aboard the Red Boar out of Bristol. My girl Minnie lives in Bath, and I’m on my way to keep her company a while until we sail again. I’ve never claimed to be a good man, but I’ll be no trouble to you, and I can pay you for supper and bed." In fact I had three months’ pay, most of it stuffed down my shirt to pose less temptation to thieves. “Will that satisfy your lady?”

“It should,” Mister Smith said, with a sheepish sort of shuffle that would have looked more at home on a boy than a big man with biceps like hams. “You understand, she’s a particular sort of woman.” He seemed to notice for the first time that his dogs were circling me suspiciously, as if waiting for the cue to set their teeth into an intruder. “Get by, dogs, we’ve a guest tonight.”

He led me into a kitchen where a warm fire was glowing and went aside to speak with the presumed mistress of the house, a young wife but hardly a merry one, her dun hair matching her dun dress so that she looked faded, as if washed too many times. I was beginning to get some feeling back into my feet when she came over with bread and salt fish.

“That ought to do for a sailor,” she said, and I nodded polite thanks, though in truth I’d eaten enough fish while at sea that I’d have preferred the toughest fowl or most dubious of hams. “If yo]]>

The voice is at once close beside me and yet muted, as if the sound is being filtered through a dream or a long stretch of time, a universe drawn out like an endless vibration of music. I can taste the sweetness of blood in my mouth, but no syllables emerge and my body feels heavy and soft.

“Ash.”

Beyond the voice are the sounds of a living planet. It’s hard to pinpoint how th [...]

The voice is at once close beside me and yet muted, as if the sound is being filtered through a dream or a long stretch of time, a universe drawn out like an endless vibration of music. I can taste the sweetness of blood in my mouth, but no syllables emerge and my body feels heavy and soft.

“Ash.”

Beyond the voice are the sounds of a living planet. It’s hard to pinpoint how the noise of life and the noise of machines differ, when one can so easily mimic the other and both contain so much variety, the boundaries between them blurred, but it’s unmistakable. This is no barren outpost, no hub of spinning metal; this is a result of millions of years of evolution, web-like ecosystems tangling into one another. It will differ from all others and yet on another level it will be the same as all others, interlocking chains of consumption and relation and habitat.

“Ash, we’re going to need to get you out. Can you talk to us?”

Hello, welcome to GlitterShip Episode #41. This is your host Keffy and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. We have a poem and a GlitterShip original for you today. Our poem is "Songs of Love and Defense in the Dawn" by Hester J. Rook.

Hester J. Rook is an Australian writer and co-editor of Twisted Moon magazine, a magazine of speculative erotic poetry (twistedmoonmag.com). She has previous prose and poetry publications in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Liminality Magazine, Strangelet and others. She's on Twittter @kitemonster and you can find her other work on her site http://hesterjrook.wordpress.com/.

Songs of Love and Defense in the Dawn

by Hester J. Rook

I am bird song the whole of me, thrumful the nattering hiss of the seawind through my whispered bones.

They seek to rewrite me call me raucous, unwieldy, liar, schemer, temptress until I am heavy (but weightless) like a pelican skimming belly over water. They speak as though their story can varnish them with righteousness despite the hurt they cause; rewrite our histories.

But I am birdsong and ironbark; my words are warnings and heralds of the crisp lipbitten dawn bright as the frosted wingtips of the black swans gliding through silver.

I am birdsong

and I am louder than the thunderstorm and softer than the gathering dusk on the hills fiercer than teeth in a kiss and unafraid I gather up my feathers and

I shield.

Our original short story is "A Spell to Signal Home" by A.C. Buchanan.

A.C. Buchanan lives just north of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. They're the author of Liquid City and Bree’s Dinosaur and their short fiction has most recently been published in Unsung Stories, the Accessing the Future anthology from FutureFire.net and the Paper Road Press anthology At the Edge Fierce Family. They also co-chair LexiCon 2017 - The 38th New Zealand National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention and edit the speculative fiction magazine Capricious. You can find them on twitter at @andicbuchanan or at www.acbuchanan.org.

A Spell to Signal Home

by A.C. Buchanan

“Ash.”

The voice is at once close beside me and yet muted, as if the sound is being filtered through a dream or a long stretch of time, a universe drawn out like an endless vibration of music. I can taste the sweetness of blood in my mouth, but no syllables emerge and my body feels heavy and soft.

“Ash.”

Beyond the voice are the sounds of a living planet. It’s hard to pinpoint how the noise of life and the noise of machines differ, when one can so easily mimic the other and both contain so much variety, the boundaries between them blurred, but it’s unmistakable. This is no barren outpost, no hub of spinning metal; this is a result of millions of years of evolution, web-like ecosystems tangling into one another. It will differ from all others and yet on another level it will be the same as all others, interlocking chains of consumption and relation and habitat.

“Ash, we’re going to need to get you out. Can you talk to us?”

I keep thinking that it’s important to answer, but each time the thought begins it’s pushed away into sucked up by the humid air. My mind drifts back, past the negotiations on Feronia station, through the twelve years of my blossoming diplomatic career, to Volturna, the ocean planet where I grew up, and the warm waters we splashed and played and relaxed in, and I think it might be my sister Francie’s voice calling me but I pull myself far enough into consciousness to realize that it’s too high-pitched, too alien…

There are hands on my body, and words: don’t think anything’s broken, still breathing. I realize the air is breathable, which means we’re almost certainly on a terraformed planet, and yet there’s so much life, much more than is usually imported. I feel hands beneath me, my body being lifted, dragged, set down. There’s a bright light—sunlight—through my eyelids.

Fragments of words come to me, words that I memorized long ago. A spell for safety in travel. But it’s in an older English than my native tongue, and so, so far away that I see only occasional words, faded ink on thick paper. I still don’t know what sandalwood is, and I think I need to stay awake, but I’m so tired…

When she was ten, Francie had edited the family spellbook, inserting “she or” and “her or” and “hers or” in blue ballpoint, her unsteady hand unused to holding a pen. I thought Dad would yell, even though he didn’t yell often, because the book was hundreds of years old and had come from Earth, but instead he turned the large pages one by one and said it was a fair point, and that it was at least a more useful amendment than the “tastes disgusting” comment written in cursive on at least two pages.

Dad didn't really believe in spells, but the book was important enough to him that when our parents first came to Volturna he'd asked for an exemption on the dimensions (but not total volume, he'd never push it that far) permitted for cultural and religious items, family heirlooms. Mum brought a Bible from the Scottish arm of her family, and the korowai she graduated in, even though she didn't feel right taking it so far from her whanau, because her grandmother—approaching ninety at that point—insisted, saying she’d have her own children one day and they needed to be connected.

We didn't quite know what that meant. Earth fascinated us, but in the same ways as tales of every other world fascinated us. Volturna was our home, and we knew its waters in an instinctive way our parents' Terra-born generation couldn't quite understand.

And so on the day that Francie narrowly avoided being in trouble for her annotations, much like any other, we stripped off and yanked on our rashguards and shorts, a process we'd perfected through practice to a matter of seconds. Mine were in the wash so I was wearing my slightly-too-small spare set, lilac with a frill around the edge of the shirt. All Francie's pairs were black.

In a few years I would be required to tell the doctors about how much I hated my body, and I'd rewrite this scene for them then, tell them I cried every time I had to change and was too ashamed to do so even in front of my sister. The truth was that as long as people got most things about me right I could deal with my body. I'd never love it, but I could not think about it easily enough.

“Go!” Francie yelled, and she yanked open the hatch and we dived out without hesitation, over the narrow platform, into the warm water around us. I ducked to wet my hair and then Francie did the same, hers chopped short and uneven. I envied it for a minute as mine smacked across my face.

“Oy!” Dad's voice yelled at us from inside. “What have I told you about closing this thing after you?”

We'd heard him alright, but if we were going to close it we'd have to walk onto the platform and down the first two steps before we could reach to close it. Waste of time.

“Sorry, Dad. Could you throw me a hair tie?”

“You kids will be the death of me.”

But sure enough one dropped down into my outstretched hand before the hatch grated shut.

We'd been in our new apartment a little over two years, moving because our parents had decided Francie and I should have our own rooms. It was on the edge of town and taking a few strokes out we could see it spread out before us; the buildings and walkways rising out of the waters that covered the planet. The flag the council had chosen, a blue circle ringed with white light against the black of space, fluttered from the higher structures. We had never seen land, and it was only when we opened the spellbook that we felt we might be missing out.

When I wake again there are drugs coursing through my veins and dampness seeping through my clothes. I open my eyes and see sunlight mottling through the trees above me. I remember being at a reception to mark the conclusion of negotiations regarding access to the route between Feronia Station and Auuue. The subject had been straightforward in itself, but was critical in its implications, setting the terms for future engagement between the Terran and Auuueen governments.

So, having sealed a new treaty, we were feeling good. I’d had a key role in these negotiations, more than was typical for a third level diplomat, and it was hard not to take that as a sign that promotion was on the horizon. I had a glass in my hand and the sweet after-taste of spiced Auuueen seafood in my mouth, and was surely blessed that I’d not only secured a career that gave me the opportunity to travel the galaxies, meet high ranking people and hopefully effect some change for the better, but also one where the gown I wore—shimmering layers of deep-green over a blue-black underlay—was an utterly appropriate expense claim.

I sit up and dizziness hits, nausea growing in me. I force myself to stay upright, pressing my knuckles firmly against the damp ground. There’s something rustling in the bushes to my right, birds flying overhead.

My memories after the reception are brief and fragmented. I remember a distress call, drawing us out of FTL, being unable to get back to anything beyond light speed.

“Cay?” I say, operating by guess work. My throat is dry.

“I’ll be right with you.” His voice is behind me. I ease myself round, bit by bit, every muscle hurting. He’s tending to the injured leg of the ambassador, who seems, mercifully, to be otherwise unhurt. The only non-human on the shuttle, Cay’s wiry frame belies its near unbreakability.

I shift my weight so I can balance, rub my eyes. “We crashed?”

“Emergency landing. This shuttle is built for capitals and ambassadorial stations, not wilderness, which seems to be all this planet has.” Looking up I can see the blue sky, the gaping wound in the forest canopy we must have hurtled through.

“Is… did everyone?”

“Everyone’s alive, yes. Some injuries, but I think with treatment everyone will be okay. Getting out of here is going to be more of a problem. Don’t try and stand up—I put you on Combamex to speed up your healing time, but it will make you woozy for a while.

Flashes of memory.

“There’s a… this is classified information…” the ambassador had said, as we all stared in panic. She’d paused, briefly, grappling with the weight of disclosure even though all our lives were at stake. “There’s a planet… Silvanus. It’s a wildlife reserve, for species from Terra. Breathable atmosphere. Uninhabited, but it’s our only chance. We can be there in a week, two at the most.”

Against Cay’s advice, I stand. Vertigo hits and I vomit, just a little, cling to a tree and manage to stay upright until it passes. Insects are buzzing all around, and the damaged shuttle is behind me. Just a few meters away the forest opens out into a clearing. The ground is covered with orange flowers, smelling of warmth, rising out of the soil to greet us.

“It’s a type of rock.” Francie was thirteen and could make me feel small without even trying. “What are cloves?”

She wasn’t asking me. The device on her wrist responded near instantly. Terran spice, made from aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum. Native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia.

Francie threw her arms down in despair. “We’re never going to be able to find any of this stuff.”

Mum had said I had to be patient with Francie when she got upset like this, that she was going through a confusing time, and that I’d understand soon enough.

I understand confusion, I had wanted to say. I want the androgen blockers and I want to wear dresses and I’m not a boy, but I don’t think I’m the girl I’ve always told you I am either. But I didn’t say anything like that. Not to Mum and not to Francie. Not for a long time.

I perched on an inflated cushion and looked at my sister. “You could just tell her you like her?” I suggested.

Francie wailed.

“I don’t think you could understand any less if you tried! I’m out of here!”

We used to dive into the water to escape, but now Francie barricaded herself in her upstairs room. I put away the book, because we had to be very careful with it, grabbed the largest mug I could find and hit the strawberry setting on the milkshake maker, hoping that despite all my own confusion, I at least had a few years before I needed to be worrying about love potions.

We all gather in the clearing. I allow the Ambassador to lean on my shoulder as she walks. She’s short, as those who grew up constrained by Terran gravity usually are, but she cuts an imposing presence. Perhaps that’s why I find it so hard so use her name. Still, I admire her much more than I fear her. If anyone can get us home, I feel, it’s her, but her face is pale with shock and she says little.

Aside from us, the group comprises two other diplomats, the pilots, a security guard and two guests flown by special arrangement between governments: Cay and an elderly human. Solomon, the pilot, his uniform crumpled and ripped on one sleeve, looks at the Ambassador, seeking her permission to lead this meeting. She accepts, gratefully, and he summarizes our current position. Our FTL drives are near completely destroyed—by what, he can’t tell, but there’s zero prospect of fixing them. Even if we could launch the shuttle, an unlikely prospect in itself, there are no stations or inhabited planets reachable on our support systems. He’s been trying to get a distress signal working, but no luck so far. He’ll keep trying.

The good news, he continues, trying to keep us optimistic, is the breathable air, the hospitable climate, that we have three day’s supply of food and with our databanks intact there is no doubt we can find food on this world.

We spend the day exploring the immediate area, administering medical treatment, working fruitlessly on sending a signal. The nine of us sleep, eventually, bunched together with spare clothes pulled over us like blankets. We try not to think about the future.

“What’s oregano?” Francie, now fifteen, had digitized the spellbook in response to Mum’s complaints about her getting her oily fingers all over it. Only I knew that at night she’d creep downstairs and pull it from the shelf, holding it in her arms as if it exuded some comfort. I’d mocked her, once, for being so attached to those archaic, impossible beliefs, and she’d cried and I’d never mentioned it again.

“It’s a herb…” said Dad.

“…for pizza,” said Mum, her eyes looking far away.

Dad squinted, looked at the screen. I propped myself up on my hands to see what he was looking at A Spell to Prevent the Conception of Child. This was going to be good.

Francie looked down and her skin, paler than mine, blushed bright red.

“Oh, no no no,” she stumbled, pointing desperately at the lower part of the screen as I enjoyed every second. “This one. A Spell to Aid Understanding of Numbers. I have an exam next week.”

“That’s kind of like cheating though, isn’t it?” I asked our parents. This day was getting even better.

“But of course, Ash, you don’t believe in spells so it can’t make any difference to your sister’s results, can it now?”

My mood deflated rapidly. It was fun while it lasted. Francie couldn’t be pregnant in any case though; she’d gotten her implant about the same time I got mine, though mine was larger—three circles under the skin of my upper arm, one releasing an androgen blocker, one for estrogen and one for progesterone.

“So where do I get oregano from?” Francie insisted impatiently.

“That’s not how spells work,” Dad replied. “There’s nothing special about oregano that helps you with maths. It’s about focusing your mind. You can use something else as long as it fits right for you. Why don’t you go for a swim and see if you feel drawn to something you could use instead?”

“So what now?” Mum said when Francie had left. “She’s going to drag in a load of seaweed because she thinks it bears some resemblance to oregano? Well I hope you’re going to be the one cleaning it up.”

Dad shrugged.

“Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll do a lot more than a bit of cleaning to get her through the next few weeks. If she’s out there in the water and the fresh air, maybe she’ll relax a bit. Staring at those numbers a thousandth time isn’t going to help her half as much as a break. These spells work sometimes, you know, just not how you’d expect.”

“Who would do this?” I ask the Ambassador. Cay has cut a tree-branch into a cane of sorts, and we’re walking out through the clearing in search of running water. “I thought the days of war were behind us.”

She sighs. “I was running a list through my head all night. There are a few governments I think would like to kill us, a couple of separatist or nationalist factions that object to their governments’ treaties with us. But they didn’t just want to kill us. If they had they could have blown us up outright. But they drew us out and disabled our drives where they thought—because Silvanus is classified—there were no habitable planets. They didn’t just want us to die, they wanted us to die slowly.”

My chest feels tight at the thought, even though the air is clear and full of oxygen. I hear a long howl in the distance. I hold up my wrist and it senses, reports back: Howler monkey (genus Alouatta monotypic in subfamily Alouattinae).

It takes us more than an hour, with measurements and sheer instinct guiding us, to find water, but suddenly we’re beside a small but fast flowing stream, just narrow enough to jump. We smile at each other, perhaps our first smile on Silvanus. While the air is humid enough for us to condense sufficient drinking water, we still need to wash ourselves and clean our clothes. This find won’t solve all our problems, but it will help, and right now that counts for success.

There’s something moving on the other side of the river. Something large.

I’ve been trained on the use of arms, as everyone entering the diplomatic service is. I’ve never expected to use one outside a carefully controlled range. But before we set off, the guard handed me a stun gun, and now I draw it, awkwardly.

It all happens at once; a snarl, a lunge towards us, huge and fast, across the stream. I fall backwards as I fire, rolling over on the rocks, panicked. It takes some time before I realize I’m safe. The Ambassador helps me to my feet.

“Same with people. I don’t think whoever did this was after us, our government, our missions. I think they were after me.”

“Who?” I shouldn’t be asking such a question, but at the same time I was almost killed too and might be stranded on this planet with weird animals forever, so I think I deserve some answers.

“Someone I once loved.”

The tiger lies motionless by the river.

“You can’t trust everyone, Ash. Believe what you know.”

Francie left home to share a tiny apartment in New Venice with a friend, two hours away by boat. I took over her larger bedroom, packed everything she left behind into four small boxes. When I visited her she’d poured me wine and we’d eat fried rice from a little shop beneath her apartment. Afterwards I’d crash on an inflatable mattress in her kitchen and listen to the boats and the spray against the windows and the clinking of bottles.

When I woke one morning she was already studying, even though it was a Saturday. There were no universities on Volturna yet, but she was in an amalgamated program with video-conferenced lectures, a practical engineering placement and three block courses a year from visiting lecturers.

“Coffee?” she asked, considerate of my seventeen-year-old, early morning brain. I signaled yes, trying to unpick the disaster that was my hair. Dad called Volturnan coffee a hideous imitation and refused to touch it, but like most of our friends, Francie and I swilled it near constantly.

“What are you studying?” I asked, looking over at her screen, caffeine in my hands at last.

“Case study from Glar. You know that weird planet where the local life-forms change how everything operates, including all the buildings.”

I did, vaguely. She showed me a picture.

“Well it means that some things aren’t possible, but they can also do things like this…”

“How does that even stay up?” The giant structure seemed to be almost floating in the air, anchored to the ground at just one small corner.

Francie showed me a screen full of equations. I shrank in mock horror.

“Magic,” I said. “I’m just going to believe that it’s magic.”

I hold my wrist beside plant after plant. About half it recognizes automatically; for others I have to input data: color, size of leaves, flowers. I’m building a list, edibles and poisons.

This one is easy. Origanum vulgare, my device says. Colloquially known as oregano, a common species of Origanum, a genus of the mint family (Lamiaceae). Safe, edible herb for humans, although allergies are recorded.

And I remember something in my personal data files, something I haven’t looked at in a long time. I sit on a fallen tree, bring up the projection of pages many hundreds of years old.

A Spell to Send a Message Home

And on it, Francie’s childish hand over the calligraphy. When a traveller wants to signal home SHE OR he must do the following…

Snippets of Francie’s voice, so young, so far away: you have to call her “she”. She’s my SISTER!

Francie’s edits weren’t just about her, I realize. She was defending me.

When I was eighteen, I downed a half bottle of a terrible orange flavored liquor before I told her that maybe I wasn’t a woman and could she please say they, not she and then I cried on her balcony because I felt like I was backing down and like I’d been lying all my life, and she’d told me to come inside before I vomited on one of her neighbors’ heads as they walked out of their door and then I laughed and then I did vomit, bitter orange disgustingness over the balcony and into the water below. Francie threw me a towel and said that she loved me but not quite enough to clean up after me.

Another memory, two years later: my family seeing me off to my first internship. I would not see Volturna—or any of them—for three years. Francie checking, one last time, that I had a copy of the spellbook in my data files. You need to be connected.

It’s been nearly twenty years since I tried to cast a spell, but Francie once said it was in our blood, so perhaps that doesn’t matter. Here on Silvanus I find more than half of what I need. That which I cannot, which perhaps grows in cooler or warmer climes, I find alternatives for, following my father’s advice and looking up pictures, then letting myself be drawn to a flower or a rock.

I project up the image again, weightless pages before me with the writing of generations. I use my finger as a stylus. SHE OR HE OR THEY OR SIE OR CO OR E OR OR OR OR OR OR OR…

I finish my work. I close the book.

And from the distance, from beyond the black of space and its spinning stations, through traffic routes and past more planets than I could ever remember, from Volturna’s deep waters and floating towns, my sister signals me home.

END

“Songs of Love and Defense in the Dawn" is copyright Hester J. Rook 2017.

“A Spell to Signal Home” is copyright A.C. Buchanan 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprint of "The Passing Bell" by Amy Griswold.

]]>Episode 41 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!
Read ahead by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/
A Spell to Signal Home
by A.C. Buchanan
“Ash.”
The voice is at ...Episode 41 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!

The voice is at once close beside me and yet muted, as if the sound is being filtered through a dream or a long stretch of time, a universe drawn out like an endless vibration of music. I can taste the sweetness of blood in my mouth, but no syllables emerge and my body feels heavy and soft.

“Ash.”

Beyond the voice are the sounds of a living planet. It’s hard to pinpoint how the noise of life and the noise of machines differ, when one can so easily mimic the other and both contain so much variety, the boundaries between them blurred, but it’s unmistakable. This is no barren outpost, no hub of spinning metal; this is a result of millions of years of evolution, web-like ecosystems tangling into one another. It will differ from all others and yet on another level it will be the same as all others, interlocking chains of consumption and relation and habitat.

“Ash, we’re going to need to get you out. Can you talk to us?”

Hello, welcome to GlitterShip Episode #41. This is your host Keffy and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. We have a poem and a GlitterShip original for you today. Our poem is "Songs of Love and Defense in the Dawn" by Hester J. Rook.

Hester J. Rook is an Australian writer and co-editor of Twisted Moon magazine, a magazine of speculative erotic poetry (twistedmoonmag.com). She has previous prose and poetry publications in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Liminality Magazine, Strangelet and others. She's on Twittter @kitemonster and you can find her other work on her site http://hesterjrook.wordpress.com/.

Songs of Love and Defense in the Dawn

by Hester J. Rook

I am bird song the whole of me, thrumful the nattering hiss of the seawind through my whispered bones.

They seek to rewrite me call me raucous, unwieldy, liar, schemer, temptress until I am heavy (but weightless) like a pelican skimming belly over water. They speak as though their story can varnish them with righteousness despite the hurt they cause; rewrite our histories.

But I am birdsong and ironbark; my words are warnings and heralds of the crisp lipbitten dawn bright as the frosted wingtips of the black swans gliding through silver.

I am birdsong

and I am louder than the thunderstorm and softer than the gathering dusk on the hills fiercer than teeth in a kiss and unafraid I gather up my feathers and

I shield.

Our original short story is "A Spell to Signal Home" by A.C. Buchanan.

A.C. Buchanan lives just north of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. They're the author of Liquid City and Bree’s Dinosaur and their short fiction has most recently been published in Unsung Stories, the Accessing the Future anthology from FutureFire.net and the Paper Road Press ant]]>

It’s cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 40 for May 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with [...]

It's cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 40 for May 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

Today we have two reprints, "She Shines Like A Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

Pear Nuallak is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in Interfictions, Unlikely Academia, and The Future Fire. Born in London and raised by Bangkokian artists, they studied History of Art jointly at SOAS and UCL, specializing in Thai art. Thai and British recipes appear semi-regularly on their food blog, The Furious Pear Pie, and they have an upcoming illustration this summer in Lackington's magazine.

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she's not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel The Prey of Gods is forthcoming from Harper Voyager this summer, set in a futuristic South Africa brimming with demigods, robots, and hallucinogenic hijinks.

She Shines Like a Moon

by Pear Nuallak

It's cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Now your London home shivers you into clothes. A length of black at your neck doesn't suffice; you add to old habits—night journeys sensibly hatted, the frank, coiled shapes below your neck wrapped in silk layered with batting and wool, each piece hand-made by the wearer herself. No other clothier would believe your particular sensitivities; only krasue know krasue.

(You make a fine new flying outfit each season. You like having things, you're the lord and lady of things.)

London's cross-hatched with forgotten waterways, the Krungthep of the Occident, murky and decadent. The Heath hides the Fleet in its hills, earth over arteries water-fat; it surfaces as a rivulet, gleams and whispers and winks knuckle high in leaf-lined silt before it talks away, louder and deeper into the festering heart of the city, but you drink it here, the source.

The tumulus field brings food best savoured like an egg with bael-sap yolk—slowly, thoughtfully, the red of it so rich on your tongue after eating bland pale without. In the viaduct pond you dump his fixie and clean your face.

After the meal you play with foxes. Your city friends have great thumping tails, on hind legs they yelp delightedly.

(When you first heard sharp cries in the hills you thought it was another krasue. Foxes came instead, sniffed you wonderingly, ears flicking. You didn't find each other appetising in the least.

Their company is brief, precious: city foxes live a year each.)

You peer into the Hollow Oak. When you were new here you asked your first fox friend, lovely old Chalk Scrag, if this was their den.

No, friend, no—my burrow smells like forest all dark and close, she says. This smells like witch. One day I will show you the best smells of my home, yes, yes, but not that witch tree, no; that is hers to show.

You wonder if she's shy. You think about whether she's a person who also knows what it's like to be apart from others. Under the bark and earth there's always the smell of black tea and sugared fruit, sometimes cake, sometimes curry.

That one's never come out, says Liquorice Grin, who counts Chalk Scrag as eightieth great-grandparent. She is busy. Leaves us gifts, but never comes out to play with us like you do, friend.

Four score years you've hunted here and no corner of Heath is unexplored but this. (You're shy, too.)

Before setting off home, you linger by the Oak as you always do.

She is shy, she is busy, but you can ask.

So for a change, tonight you say, “Your home smells wonderful,” into the hollow. Your eerie heart beats strong as you fly home.

Strong teeth and supple tongue open the night-hatch to your flat. You shed your flying clothes and look at yourself on the bed; in your own light you consider the soft limbs, the clean red hollow between your shoulders. What are you truly hungry for?

You enfold your secret self with a body that accepts you neatly and completely.

The black silk remains at your throat.

It is good to lay your head on the pillow.

In the morning your longer self stretches her limbs, washes, thinks about being 'she' as she pulls on a turquoise jumper, so good on skin the colour of tamarind flesh, a long skirt in pig's blood, Malvolio tights, black boots laced up.

Before a mirror she wanders her hands over the pleasing stubble on the back and sides of her head, dressing the length on top into a sleek pompadour.

(Your grandmothers' hairstyle is now subculture fashionable but you wear it anyway, you're the age of two grandmothers together and want to remember what you had.)

Once you tended silkworms and cotton bolls, had a great loom under the belly of your stilt house; your family once wore the fabric you grew, span, wove.

Now it's only you, the narrowness of your single self.

(But the cowls will warm your students, so this will do.)

That evening returns you to your alma mater. Female Abjection and the Monstrous Feminine in Thai Cinema, the email said. Open to all. It's sure to be diverting.

You've not yet been to the Bloomsbury buildings—when you studied languages, it was the School of Oriental Studies at 2 Finsbury Circus and you were a man hatted and trousered, as it sometimes suits your fancy. The institution's re-invented itself: cosmopolitan, international, politically active, inclusive. (Coy about its hand in training Empire: to control a people you know their tongues, their hearts.)

You sit and are lectured on a self Othered through others' eyes. Except for one Thai man, the lecturer cites theorists and academics like her, white and Western.

She says, “There are no feminists in Thailand—Thai women don't really identify as feminists; it's just not done. People talk about South-East Asian women having power and ownership, but…” she shrugs.

(It's never occurred to the lecturer to ask what a Thai woman thinks of herself, let alone a krasue's view of her own condition.)

You think of spitting in her tea. Wouldn't make much difference to the taste; your lips are primed. But her words will survive a thousand years: she's adding to the sum of human knowledge. She doesn't need your curse—no, it wouldn't make much difference at all.

There is loyalty, still, though you've been here so long and it's your countrywomen who fear you most, who have always kept their distance from you, who would reject and destroy and silence you instantly if they knew your tastes.

But you were made by them. You are their monster. It's hard to believe others would believe you. The hunger you've mastered, mostly, but grieving anger and loneliness thunders through your whole interior.

(Is it good or bad you've only found husband-forgetting rice? Perhaps men are more easily forgotten by wives. You've no inclination for husbands: the sum of your knowledge on this subject is that they're common.)

Once your fork and spoon are closed, an invitation appears, curling hand tracing bright in the air:

You are invited to

A Midnight Cake Tasting

for the delight of the Witch Ambrosia

at the Hollow Oak, Hampstead Heath

You hesitate, chewing your lip. Perhaps she's only inviting you out of kindness, politeness, obligation. Perhaps she won't be there. Perhaps this is a trick. But she's asked, and you accept.

You go as yourself, your honest, smallest self. When the clock strikes the hour you hover, unsure.

“Come in, love, I've been waiting so long,” says Ambrosia.

The witch leads you in, steps winding like shell chambers into the earth. Her home smells like a home should, is full of things neatly kept, herbs bunched, cables sorted. In the lamp light you see her fine umber self dressed in a gown of fresh plum, face framed with raincloud hair in a thousand braids. You know at once she is splendid.

“Oh, is that for me?” she says as you give her a rich saffron scarf. Thanks is a gentle touch to your cheek.

You dance together, fox fur coppered in ghost light. Ambrosia shines like a moon. Your heart shouts. You are full up of her.

The Simplest Equation

by Nicky Drayden

I'm doodling in the margins of my Math 220 syllabus when she walks into the classroom like a shadow, like a nothing, like an oil slick with pigtails. She scans the empty seats in the most calculating manner and I shudder when she spots the one next to me. Her knees bend all the wrong ways in her jeans as she walks up my aisle, and her head is a near perfect ellipsoid that could've fallen out of any geometry primer. She sets her backpack on the floor between us, then maneuvers into the chair with the grace of a lame giraffe.

"I hope I'm in the right place," she says as she finally settles—her English impeccable, though she exhales the words more than speaks them, typical of her kind. "Partial Differential Equations?"

I nod, trying not to notice all those rows of tiny pointed white teeth crammed into her mouth, but then she smiles and it becomes impossible not to. I swallow hard, somehow managing to extend my hand.

"I'm Mariah," I say, my eyes tracing along the brown of my skin until it intersects the blue-black of hers.

"Kwalla," she says. "Two syllables. Not like the bear."

I force a laugh. It comes out easier than expected.

"Nice doodle," she says, looking at the squares and swirls and meandering lines. "Very symmetrical."

"Mmm..." I purse my lips and cock my head, then with a single tap on the screen, I reset my syllabus to its virginal form.

She's not the first Ahkellan I've met. There are a couple hundred here on campus. They come to Stanford when they can't get into Vrinchor Academy or Byshe, or any of the other prestigious schools in their system. Bring us your next best brightest, has become our new school motto. Yale, Harvard, and the other Ivy League schools split a couple dozen Ahkellans between them, but California's consistent temperatures are much more appealing to a race that goes into involuntary stasis when the weather dips below forty-three degrees.

After brief introductions, Professor Gopal drones on about semilinear equations. I listen and take notes attentively, afraid to let anything slip past me. I used to love math. Now it's the bane of my existence, always more of the same lifeless problems. But I've got too many credits and too little money to think about changing majors now. So I buckle down and frequently pull all-nighters just to squeak by with Bs.

I glance over at Kwalla who's busy solving problem sets on her notebook, two chapters ahead of the professor already. This class is probably a joke to her, just a way to rack up a few credits before applying for an interstellar transfer. But she seems pleasant enough, and none of the other Ahkellans I've met have ever shown anything that resembled a sense of humor, or an appreciation for art for that matter.

"Hey," I whisper, keeping the resentment out of my voice. "You looking for a study partner?"

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, we meet at Meyer Library, hustling through the stacks for table space among towers of old, dusty books. When my grades slip, we add another study session Saturday afternoons in her dorm room. It smells vaguely of sandalwood, and the paneled doors of her closet are neatly lined with posters of angst-ridden Ahkellans. Their slick, black faces are dour and their postures nonchalant—reminiscent of late twenty-first century brood bands, stuff my parents used to listen to.

We sit cross-legged on her bed... well, I sit cross-legged, and she sits in some variation of the lotus position that teeters on an optical illusion with all those joints of hers. Our notebooks are spread out between us. Kwalla's explaining Fourier transforms to me for the third time, and we're both beyond frustrated. I try to listen, but my mind drifts, and before I know it I've created a doodle that spans half the page, covering the miniscule amount of calculations I'd started.

"Sorry," I grumble. I lean back against the wall and stare out the window at her prized lake view of Lagunita. Students horseplay on its shore, blue-gray water lapping at their ankles. They laugh, living life and enjoying the "college experience," while I'm cooped up in here, breathing stale circulated air and staring at integral curves until my eyes bleed.

I heave a sigh. "Maybe I should drop the class. Drop out of college. Drop off the face of the Earth while I'm at it."

Kwalla smirks. "You're depressed. Good."

"Good?" I slam my notebook shut, turn away from her, and fume like a shuttle on its launch pad. Just when I was beginning to think she was a pretty decent person, or Ahkellan. Or whatever.

"Yes, it means you're close to understanding the story of this equation. It's a classic tale of love and loss. It's meant to be depressing, yet beautiful at the same time."

I roll my eyes as she resets to a clean page and starts the equation again. She works downward, shuffling constants and variables, swaying like a concert pianist. When she's done, a single tear trickles down her cheek.

She glances up at me and notices that I'm crying, too. "You saw the story this time?" she asks with hopefulness in her voice.

I slowly shake my head, more confused now than ever. "Not even close. I was just trying to figure out how to tell my parents that I've wasted their hard-earned money and the last two and a half years of my life. I hate math."

"Give me a break," I say, rubbing my eyes. "I might not get your 'stories' but you don't get how incredibly hard this is for me. I wasn't born a genius like you, solving proofs while still in the womb."

From the grit in my words, I expect Kwalla to ask me to leave, but instead she lays a spindly hand on my knee.

"I've worked hard to get here, Mariah, but what you say is partially true. Math is our first language, and we crave it when we're born like you crave your mother's milk. It is our first friend. Our first love. Our first everything." Kwalla pauses, face riddled with uncertainty, then draws a black pouch from her backpack. She unties the drawstring and slips a large, tear-shaped crystal into the palm of her hand. Hundreds of facets speckle the ceiling with light, so beautiful. "I've never shared this with anyone," she says timidly.

"It's amazing..."

"I haven't even started yet," she says with a laugh, then leans close so I can get a better look. Foreign symbols are etched into each cut side of the crystal. "It's a yussalun, a calling piece. It's similar to your auditory instruments, except... well, it's probably easier just to show you."

Kwalla holds the piece up in front of her like a trumpet, but several inches away from her mouth. Her thin fingers tap across the facets and the air above the piece crystallizes into an intricate fractal pattern, a living snowflake that blooms sideways and then stretches for the ceiling with all its might. Buds gracefully unfurl to the rhythm of an inaudible beat, stirring up a sense of wonder within me. Then the ice crystals slow, becoming thinner and more delicate until they peter out with a hopelessness that fills me with inexplicable grief.

"That was the equation we've been working on," she says after we've both had a chance to catch our breath. "Now do you see?"

I nod, feeling wounded and vulnerable. There's a terrible rawness inside my chest that I wouldn't wish on anyone, and yet I crave more. I need more. "Do another," I whisper.

So she shares her favorite stories with me, and together we sit pensive for mysteries, hold our breath for thrillers, and giggle at the titillation of cheap romance—each fractal evoking an emotion, pure and intense and untamed. After the sun no longer shines through her window, each fractal leaves a slight chill in the air, so we slip halfway under the covers and Kwalla shares with me a fractal with a perfect heart at its base that dazes me with childlike joy—an equation simple enough to solve itself. Then we throw the covers over our heads and I can't tell where I end and she begins, so I giggle and Kwalla giggles, then she laughs, and I laugh.

#

Our professor posts the scores to our midterm exam outside the classroom door. With great trepidation, I type in the last four digits of my student ID and the page slowly scrolls down, pointlessly melodramatic. My finger shakes as I trace my way across the screen over failure and mediocrity and more failure until I reach the grade for last week's exam. My chest explodes with delight when I see the 98.5.

I'm so giddy I can barely stay seated as I wait for Kwalla to arrive. Thanks to her, I've rediscovered my passion for math. I busy myself solving practice problems that tell tales of triumph in the face of adversity. I'll pick the best one and share it with Kwalla tonight. In these last couple weeks, she's taught me how to play her yussalun, turning water molecules in the air into icy fractals the size of a toy poodle, though mine pale in comparison to hers. The bluntness of my fingertips makes it difficult to tap the right facets, but what I lack in accuracy I make up for in perseverance. I've caused more than my fair share of fractals to wilt, however, when I get it right, math and story collide, forming something exponentially more magnificent than the sum of its parts.

Her seat is still empty. I wait as long as I can stand it, then ditch class a few minutes into Professor Gopal's lecture. The phone rings and rings as I race to Kwalla's dorm. Through her door, I can hear her speaking in an Ahkellan dialect sounding something like a rooster trying to fog up a mirror. A deeper voice follows with the tin ring of an IVT, an instantaneous voice transmission, cheapest way to call intragalaxy. Against my better judgment, I knock softly. Kwalla answers with an uncontainable smile, and nods for me to have a seat at her desk.

Her conversation stretches on for another ten minutes, and as she paces barefoot across the blue carpet, I admire all the ways her legs bend from beneath her skirt, and how the fluorescent light overhead glints on her skin—like iridescent rainbows set adrift across the night's sky.

"I can't believe it!" she shrills after she finally disconnects. "It couldn't be more perfect! I've been accepted, Mariah. I'm going to Byshe!"

"That's wonderful!" I say, and despite the rip in my heart, I really mean it.

Getting into Byshe is worse odds than matching all the balls in the Bippho Trans-Galactic pick-twelve. Optimism has never been my strong suit, but maybe if I study hard and get my grades up, I could apply to Byshe next year. Kwalla could tutor me the rest of this semester and maybe even a few weeks into the summer. I nod to myself, impervious to the laws of probability and blissfully ignoring the fact that I can barely afford out-of-state tuition, much less out of solar system.

"I've got some news, too," I say.

Kwalla sits down next to me, and her eyes get wide and glassy. "You passed!"

"Nu-uh. I nearly aced it!"

"This calls for a celebration!" She pulls her yussalun out from its pouch and hands it to me. "Here, you play something nice while I pack." Her voice trails off at the end, a whirlwind of excitement deflated by a sudden prick from reality.

"Pack?"

"If I don't catch the next shuttle up ..." Kwalla says, voice pitched high and words running together as she tries to stitch together some sort of excuse for wanting to get the hell out of here. I don't blame her, not with the life she has waiting for her across the stars. Kwalla tilts her head forward, and after a weighty silence, she leans against my shoulder. "I'm leaving for Byshe in the morning."

#

I can't let her go without showing her how I feel, so after she's fallen asleep, I slip out of bed and onto a spot on the floor where moonlight from her window falls across my dimly backlit notebook. I work through the whole night, scribbling down the story of us, the fun we've had in our short time together, and all the could-have-beens for our future. It becomes unwieldy, our equation, and even with the tiniest font, it still won't fit on one screen. By the time I finish, my fingers are cramped, my brain is tight, and I can barely see straight. But the story is magnificent, engrossing, tragic.

Careful not to wake her too soon, I cradle the yussalun in my hands and prepare to share. Our story takes nearly thirty minutes to play, and when I'm done, I sit back and let it expand into the room. Two concentric buds sleepily emerge and form a base, then sprout three arms each, spiny like a starfish. They curl and coil, each arm to the beat of its own drummer. I marvel at the beginnings of their different stories, and my heart flutters as I try to keep up with them simultaneously.

At a meter high, I start to rouse Kwalla so she can see it as the first bits of sunlight shimmer across the fractal's crystalline surface, but just as I lay a soft hand on Kwalla's shoulder, the fractal begins to wilt. It steals my breath as I watch, my mind churning over the equation, wondering if I'd made a bad calculation or misplayed a note. But I couldn't have made a mistake, not on something this important.

All at once, the arms spiral up with the grace and might of a dancer, recursive shapes predictable yet mesmerizing. My creation reaches for the ceiling, and I grin in anticipation of the final blossom, but the fractal is thickening like an insatiable sapling and not tapering into delicate buds. I exhale and my breath lingers in the air, coldness striking through my nightshirt as I realize this thing is far from stopping.

"Kwalla!" I scream, lips cracked from the moisture being sucked from the air.

She doesn't respond and I shake her. Kwalla stirs for a moment, as if trying to fight through impending stasis, but then she goes still.

I take a swing at the fractal with her desk chair, smashing off one of the frosty tendrils, but it grows back with a vengeance until all is symmetrical again. Logic gives way to adrenaline and I scoop Kwalla's body up into my arms.

"Fire!" I say, over and over through the hallways at the top of my lungs, figuring it will draw more attention than yelling "fractal!"

Someone pulls the alarm, and we all scatter outside and across the street. I rub warmth back into Kwalla's limbs as onlookers wait for signs of smoke and flames. Of course they never come, and when rumors start circulating about a prank, I think that maybe I'd overreacted. An explosion of terra cotta tiles silences those thoughts as the fractal pierces the roof of Kwalla's dormitory. Exposed to the night air and the moisture from the nearby lake, the fractal accelerates, busting brick and shattering glass. It's odd, but no one panics or frets over lost possessions. We just watch, completely captivated.

The fractal doesn't slow until it's demolished both wings of Lagunita Court and the adjacent parking lot, and even then, it's not quite finished. A single thin stalk stretches up for the stars, and it reaches, reaches, reaches—wispy recursions sprouting like a vine on its way to the stratosphere. With some effort, I pull my gaze away and watch the crowd. There's not a dry eye to be found, including Kwalla's, her body cradled comfortably against mine.

"I had no idea," she exhales weakly, "...that you felt so deeply. It's the most incredible story I've ever seen."

"I'll miss you," I say before she has a chance to make well-meaning promises we both know it'd be impossible to keep. I savor this moment, because in a few hours, she'll be on a plane to Houston, just one small step on her long journey home.

#

There's a flurry of media coverage and threats of my expulsion, but the Board of Trustees changes its tune when news of the fractal reaches Ahkel and impresses even their most renowned intellectuals. Suddenly I'm no longer a disgraceful delinquent, but one of Stanford's brightest scholars, and any blemishes on my academic record are written off as me being a genius misunderstood in my own time. I laugh at their antics. At least it distracts me long enough for the numbness inside me to fade.

A week later, my phone hums in my pocket while I'm doodling in Professor Gopal's class. I fish it out so I can check the caller ID. My heart slips to my toes when I see it's an IVT number, and I scramble out of the classroom on rubbery legs.

"Hello?" I say into my phone. "Hello?" I say again, harder this time, as if it'll get my words across subspace faster. There's only a slight time dilation, but the seconds drag on like days. I hang onto the sounds of rustling static, waiting for Kwalla's voice.

Only it's not Kwalla. My disappointment is short lived, however, when the caller identifies herself as the dean of the Mathematics department at Vrinchor Academy. She says she's eager for the opportunity to take a closer look at how I derived my equations, and that if I'm interested, there's a spot for me in the upcoming school year, full scholarship. I don't bother holding back my elation, and even though a billion miles separate us, I'm sure the dean's ear will be ringing for days.

I return to class and respectfully gather my belongings, though my classmates couldn't have missed my screams. I nod at Professor Gopal, and he smiles knowingly. I can't believe I'll be living a dream, studying under the best minds in the galaxy, devouring math in all its forms. And of course it doesn't hurt that I'll be a quick shuttle's ride from Kwalla, just two planets away.

I race across campus, cutting through manicured lawns, dodging traffic, and pushing myself through the knot of tourists gathered in front of our fractal. I fall to my knees, chest heaving and smiling wider than any sane person ought to. My warmed skin braces me against the deep chill the fractal emits. Despite my best efforts not to look like a complete fool, I still draw stares and the attention of a camera lens or two.

From the corner of my eye, I swear I see our fractal moving. Changing. Of course that's impossible after all this time—probably just an odd reflection of sunlight or the shadow of a passing cloud. Doesn't matter. I've got a date with destiny tonight: a passport to find, flights to book, a whole planet to say goodbye to and above all, I've got a new story that's itching to be told.

“She Shines Like a Moon” was originally published in Lackington's and is copyright Pear Nuallak, 2015.

"The Simplest Equation" was originally published in Space and Time Magazine and is copyright Nicky Drayden 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a poem by Joanne Rixon, and an original story by A.C. Buchanan.

]]>
Episode 38 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!
Read ahead by picking up your copy here: http://www.glittership.com/buy/
She Shines Like a Moon
by Pear Nuallak
It's cold in London ...

It's cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 40 for May 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

Today we have two reprints, "She Shines Like A Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

Pear Nuallak is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in Interfictions, Unlikely Academia, and The Future Fire. Born in London and raised by Bangkokian artists, they studied History of Art jointly at SOAS and UCL, specializing in Thai art. Thai and British recipes appear semi-regularly on their food blog, The Furious Pear Pie, and they have an upcoming illustration this summer in Lackington's magazine.

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she's not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel The Prey of Gods is forthcoming from Harper Voyager this summer, set in a futuristic South Africa brimming with demigods, robots, and hallucinogenic hijinks.

She Shines Like a Moon

by Pear Nuallak

It's cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Now your London home shivers you into clothes. A length of black at your neck doesn't suffice; you add to old habits—night journeys sensibly hatted, the frank, coiled shapes below your neck wrapped in silk layered with batting and wool, each piece hand-made by the wearer herself. No other clothier would believe your particular sensitivities; only krasue know krasue.

(You make a fine new flying outfit each season. You like having things, you're the lord and lady of things.)

London's cross-hatched with forgotten waterways, the Krungthep of the Occident, murky and decadent. The Heath hides the Fleet in its hills, earth over arteries water-fat; it surfaces as a rivulet, gleams and whispers and winks knuckle high in leaf-lined silt before it talks away, louder and deeper into the festering heart of the city, but you drink it here, the source.

The tumulus field brings food best savoured like an egg with bael-sap yolk—slowly, thoughtfully, the red of it so rich on your tongue after eating bland pale without. In the viaduct pond you dump his fixie and clean your face.

After the meal you play with foxes. Your city friends have great thumping tails, on hind legs they yelp delightedly.

(When you first heard sharp cries in the hills you thought it was another krasue. Foxes came instead, sniffed you wonderingly, ears flicking. You didn't find each other appetising in the least.

Their company is brief, ]]>

GlitterShipYesNo00:33:2521fullEpisode #39: “Mercy” by Susan Jane Bigelowhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-39-mercy-by-susan-jane-bigelow/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-39-mercy-by-susan-jane-bigelow/#commentsSat, 27 May 2017 19:14:32 -0400GlitterShipUncategorizedhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-39-mercy-by-susan-jane-bigelow/Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we’re almost caught up … just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won’t be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn’t deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting… my top surgery is just around the corner. It’s possible that I’ll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42… but I’ll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time.

Back onto the episode… today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, “Mercy.” If you recognize Susan’s name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, “Sarah’s [...]

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we're almost caught up ... just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won't be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn't deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting... my top surgery is just around the corner. It's possible that I'll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42... but I'll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time.

Back onto the episode... today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, "Mercy." If you recognize Susan's name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, "Sarah's Child" last May. You can check that out in Episode 28, available at GlitterShip.com or via our feed.

Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing the Future. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Her alter-ego is J. Damask. She tweets as @jolantru.

Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, and the Lambda Award-winning "The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard," among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.

Rion stood by the edge of the water, the waves curling around her bare, metal-and-plastic feet. She knelt by the water and placed her hand in. Sensors registered temperature, composition, motion. But they couldn’t find what Rion had lost.

Here and there the remains of buildings stood like ghastly stick figures, silhouetted in the deepening cool of twilight.

Rion stood and closed her eyes. She stretched her hands out and reached her sensors as far as they would go, but no. Nothing lived on this shore, now. She was alone.

And so she lowered her arms and began walking, one step at a time, into the sea, until the water covered her head and she was gone.

The quake and then the wave had come so suddenly that there had been no time to react. Rion’s memories were a jumble of shaking ground, rushing water, crashing buildings and pitiful screams followed by a hollow, awful silence.

She walked onward, her weight keeping her firmly on the bottom of the sea. All around her, she could see the shapes and forms of the shattered town, now submerged.

The waters grew dark, so she switched on the lights on her head, heart, and hands. A face swam before her, and she started, afraid. A woman, eyes open and sightless, drifted there at the bottom of the ocean like so much debris.

Her name had been Iona, and she’d been kind to Rion. She’d had a bright smile, a quick temper, and a tendency to laugh a little too loud and too long. She’d been happy.

Rion whispered an apology to her, and touched her cool metal fingers to the woman’s stiff forehead. She shut her eyes, and stood again.

She looked up, and saw debris floating high above. Some of it was shaped like humans, some not.

There was no way to help them now.

She kept walking through what had been her home. She had come to this small town by the sea to be away from the turmoil of the cities, and she had found both work and unexpected friendship. The humans here had been so welcoming and accepting, so unlike anywhere else she’d ever gone on this world.

She shone her light around. It fell on the gap in the sea wall where the tsunami had broken through, and everything suddenly seemed to turn on its edge. She made her way to the wall, and then walked through and beyond it, her lights illuminating the way.

Fish swam all around her, attracted by her light, while little creatures scuttled across the bottom. She looked up, and her light couldn’t reach the surface. The sun had set, and; Rion was surrounded by frigid, suffocating darkness.

What was she to do, now? She couldn’t stay here at the bottom of the sea forever. But she had no place to go back to on land. She sat down, then, on the rocks and sand, and switched her lights off.

Rion’s sensors told her what she didn’t want to know about the sea all about her: it teemed with life.

Life. Behind her there was so much death, and in front of her so much life. But what was she? What was an Artificial, compared to the dead she’d left behind and the sea creatures swimming all around her?

At last, at last, she wailed in grief and empty fury at the dark waters.

And, for a wonder, the planet answered her. The ground shifted and a point far, far ahead of her blinked with a soft green glow.

Daughter sei, said the vast network of artificial intelligence that was, for all purposes, the planet Sovena. A sei was a sentient artificial life form. Why do you cry to me?

“Bring them back!” shouted Rion, wishing she could cry. But she had no tear ducts, no lungs, and no way of releasing this deep, sharp grief. The curse of her kind; suffering went on and on without relief. “Bring them back to me. Sovena, please! I tried so hard!”

Tell me about them, said Sovena softly. Tell me of the people who drowned in my sea.

“They fished,” said Rion, her voice shaking and distorted. “They made such beautiful things. They sang songs. And they baked bread for me—” She found she couldn’t continue, and keened softly at the rocks, putting her face in her hands. “Why did you kill them? Why?”

The world shifts, said Sovena. The ground cracks and separates. My plates move, and cause the oceans to shudder. It is as it must be.

“I know,” said Rion. “I know!” She gazed at the steadily blinking light far away in the shadows. “But please. Please bring them back. Humans have so many gods they cry out to… Artificials have nothing. But I have you. I have faith in you. Please. Please.” She bowed her head in prayer and supplication. “Please. I have lived a good life. Take me instead of them. At least give me a way to grieve for them!”

Sovena said nothing for a long time. Then the ground seemed to move again, and she heard the planet whisper in her mind, Go back to the shore, daughter sei.

“You’ll do nothing? You—of course not. You’re not a god. You’re just the planetary network become aware. Fine. Fine. I’ll go.” She stood, fury and sadness swirling around her in the cold depths. “They were good people. They didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t deserve to survive. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

She turned and began to walk back through the darkness towards the remains of her home.

Rion’s head broke the water, and the first thing she saw were the stars, high above. She hauled herself out of the water, and sat there on the beach.

And then she realized she wasn’t alone.

Machines surrounded her. They all blinked with green lights. Some of them were aware, some not, but they all waited there for her.

And then they moved into the sea. Overhead, more machines circled, then dove into the water near where the sea wall had been.

The water lit up with light as the machines worked. Rion watched, hardly daring to move. And then the water began to drain out of the basin of the town. The sea wall rose again. Machines covered where the town had been. They had cleared a space at the center, and lined up two hundred still and silent figures.

Rion stood, then, and walked to the center of the ruins.

For you, for you, she thought, addressing the dead, and her thoughts were transmitted to the machines. They swarmed over the town, bringing the debris and ruins to create. For you! For you!

“Dream in slumber, children of the sky,” whispered Rion, the first lines of an old funeral song. “To the stars we return, to the night we go.”

And then the machines took up the song, each singing with its own voice.

Send your soul back home

Across the deep darkness of the wastes

For grace and forgiveness we beg

For mercy and love we ask

Find old Earth at last, and come to rest.

They finished their creation. Rion was about to thank them when a sharp pain pierced her. She fell to the ground in agony as tiny machines swarmed all over her, and laughed as she was remade.

When the sun rose that morning on what had been the town of Fisherman’s Bounty, the light kissed the spires of a fragile, delicately-made temple. At the top sat a human woman, crying her newly-made heart out.

They found her, and fed and clothed her. She didn’t say who she was, and eventually they let the matter drop. She thought about hurling herself off the spire of the temple often during those first days. She was human, now. She would certainly join the people of the town in death.

But then the wind would blow the smell of the sea to her nostrils, or the stars would shine brightly above, and she would curl her soft hands around the railing of the temple spire and say to herself: one more night.

One night became two, and two nights became a week, then a month. Then the sun rose one morning, and Rion realized that she had decided to live.

Time passed, then, as it always did. Relief ships came and went. The temple spire where the town had been became a pilgrimage site for haunted family, grieving survivors of the quake from other places, and the curious and morbid.

Rion got used to being organic. She found it difficult to remember to eat and wash and groom, and for a time she found it nearly impossible to find food and fresh water. She felt dirty and hungry much of the time, and sleep, when it came, was a terror.

But, in time, she managed. She found that she became good at managing, at carrying on. She moved out of the rickety temple spire and into a small modular house the relief agency had left by the side of the sea.

The visitors stopped coming after a while. No one rebuilt the town. Why would they? It was a graveyard. But Rion stayed. She grew her garden, she made trinkets to sell, and she lived.

And in time, a craftswoman named Lanika who had lost friends and family in the flood came to the hill above the low plain where the town had been to find Rion there, waiting, the promise of a new family in her strong grip and windswept brow.

And so fifty years went by.

The dawn was cool and the wind from the ocean was only a light, briny kiss. The summer had been kind, but the coolness that hung over the bay suggested the turn of the season.

An aged, bent woman pushed the boat off the landing, and gingerly settled herself into it. And then she did what she’d feared to do for the last five decades; she set sail towards the middle of the sea.

She sailed for hours, trying to remember where she had gone, what direction, how the sun had looked from deep under the water. But her memory was a loose, hollow thing, and she couldn’t hold the past as firmly as she once had.

At last she came to a place that felt as good as any other. She set the offering papers on one of the small wooden boats Lanika crafted for mourners and the devout, put the boat on the undulating waters, and set it on fire.

The boat sailed away, the offering papers with names written on each scrap crisping and blackening in the flames.

And then Rion said her prayer.

“Sovena,” she said. “Goddess. I know you’re there, somewhere under the water. Come and see an old woman who once followed you. Come and tell me why.

“Sovena. Awake. Talk to me. Please.”

She waited. For a long time, nothing happened. She started to get hungry; she had brought but little food and water with her. She waited anyway.

And at last, as the sun slipped down below the horizon, she saw a green glow deep beneath the waves, slowly rising toward her. When the lights of whatever was down there had expanded to surround the boat and it was so close to the surface that she could reach down and touch it if she wanted, it stopped. Then there was a bubbling near her, and a silvery figure made of thousands of tiny crablike machines rose out of the water.

Hello again, daughter human, said Sovena, her body writhing with the green-lit movement of its components.

“I can hear you in my head,” said Rion, touching her temple. “How?”

I left one small piece of you like you were, so that we could talk if you wished.

“Ah,” said Rion, feeling a strange sense of betrayal. “I see.”

It’s been many years, said Sovena, and Rion thought she sensed sorrow in the planetwide sei’s mental voice.

“Tell me,” said Rion, her throat parched. “Why?”

Her question could have meant many things, but Sovena understood at once. You grieved. And so I allowed you to mourn as you wished.

“That’s not an answer,” said Rion, shaking her head as anger built. “I’ve thought about this for a long, long time. You left me on that tower, high above the waters. Did you ever think I’d come down from it?”

No, said Sovena.

“You gave me the ability to die,” said Rion. “That’s what you thought I wanted. To die like my friends had. Lungs full of water… to breathe the sea and sink!”

Was that not what you wanted?

Rion shook her head, tears brimming. She brushed them away with a calloused finger. “Of course it was.”

Sovena did not respond. Then the thousands of machines that made up the human shape of her walked slowly across the water, reaching out a hand. Rion took it, feeling the cool, wriggling life of the machines that comprised it.

Tell me why you lived.

“Because…” Rion began, then faltered. She tried again, and found herself unable to put what she felt into words. “Because I did,” she said eventually, frustrated. “Because sometimes you just go on, because the next day is going to happen and you might as well be there.”

A long silence stretched between them. The waves rocked the boat, and somewhere sea birds called.

I grieve, said Sovena then, and Rion’s eyes widened.

“I thought you might,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

Humans hate our kind. They hunt them, cast them out, forbid them from making more of themselves. I live only because they cannot find a way to destroy me. But I have lost so many sei, so many have been silenced at human hands. I miss their voices.

Rion cupped her other hand over Sovena’s, trying to decide whether to be angry or comforting. “And so you wanted to see what I would do. How I would grieve.”

Sovena said nothing, but Rion’s question was answered at last.

She thought of her wife Lanika, her daughters, and her grandchildren. She thought of fifty years of heartbreak and love and struggle.

Fifty years where the sun came up over the water each and every day.

“You go on,” said Rion firmly. “Because you have no choice. And in time you learn to live with what has been lost.”

Yes. Sovena pressed her other hand against Rion’s forehead, and she felt something trickling out of her brain. Information, perhaps. Her life. I understand, now. I did not then. I am sorry.

Sovena gently pulled her hands away from Rion, and began to sink beneath the waves once more.

“Wait,” said Rion, understanding dawning at last. “You. You did this, didn’t you? You flooded my town! It was you!”

Sovena looked back at her, and Rion thought that she could sense an ancient guilt and sadness emanating from the suddenly still form.

Be well, daughter human, she said at last. Do not come here again. I am not your god any longer.

And with that she vanished below the sea, leaving Rion alone once more.

“You’re no goddess,” Rion said to the vanishing green lights, her voice shaking with fury. “You’re a monster! Just like the humans always said!”

But there was no response, not this time.

Rion floated there for a long time, watching the stars overhead and thinking. Then she started back towards the shore.

She sailed on through the night, letting the stars guide her, until at last the sky to the east began to lighten. She could see the high spire of the temple close by, and beyond it, the hill where her house was.

Lanika waited there for her, staring hopefully out to sea as she absently carved the sides of another small offering-boat. And when the two of them met on the shore at last, as the first rays of sun kissed the top of the temple spire, Rion gathered her in her strong arms and buried her face in her wife’s salt-smelling neck and windblown hair.

“Did you find out what you wanted to?” Lanika asked.

Rion nodded, but she could find nothing to say.

“I’m sorry,” Lanika told her, and kissed the top of her head.

That night Rion went down to the shore again, after repeatedly reassuring Lanika that she wasn’t about to set out on the boat again, and sat near where the old sea wall had been. The outline of the temple called to her, and on impulse she walked to it and began, hesitantly, to climb.

The structure was rickety and rusted, but the construction was solid. It bore her weight, and her muscles were still strong enough to haul her body up the long ladder.

She reached the top at last, and sat in the place where she’d poured out her grief so long ago, trying to figure out what to do next.

And as she looked out to sea she saw the last thing she’d expected; a small green light running beneath the waves. She watched, half-afraid, half-intent, as it drew closer. At last a small machine, its lights glowing green, reached the tower and began to climb. It crested the summit and sat in front of Rion, waiting.

“Well,” said Rion. “I suppose you’re here to kill me?”

The machine crawled up onto Rion’s shoulder and perched there. Rion, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed it to remain.

I grieve, the voice of Sovena said in her mind.

“You killed them,” said Rion. “You have no right to grieve!”

I was so angry, said Sovena, her mental voice full of sorrow. Humans killed so many of my daughters.

“So you killed some of them,” said Rion. “It wasn’t about me, was it? You were angry because humans were attacking Artificials and you shook the earth to kill an innocent town! One of the only places where humans and Artificials were actually getting along!”

I did. I should not have. I grieve.

“And you want, what? Forgiveness? I can’t do that. They… they were so good to me. I still remember their faces. And they died for nothing!”

Many of my sei have died for less.

“That excuses nothing,” said Rion bitterly. “And you know it. So what do you want?”

But Sovena didn’t respond. Rion took the small machine off her shoulder, cupping it in her hands.

But how will I go on? said Sovena, and her voice was almost plaintive.

Rion almost threw the machine back down into the sea. But instead she sighed, the anger draining out of her at last. She lifted it to her lips, and kissed it gently.

“You just do,” she said, and set it on the floor. She watched as it scuttled back down the tower and vanished into the waves.

She stayed in the tower that night, watching the sea and the sky. No other machines came.

And when the sun rose, Rion’s grief and anger and fury finally went out with the tide.

Rion never spoke to Sovena again. But she noticed eventually that the weather on the planet was a little less harsh, that natural disasters happened less often, and that life became just a little bit easier.

It wouldn’t bring back the dead, and it wouldn’t change the past. But sometimes, thought Rion, it was the small miracles that mattered the most.

“Skyscarves/Aurora” is copyright Joyce Chng 2017.

“Mercy" is copyright Susan Jane Bigelow 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprints of "She Shines Like a Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.
GlitterShip is still running ...Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we're almost caught up ... just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won't be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn't deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting... my top surgery is just around the corner. It's possible that I'll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42... but I'll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time.

Back onto the episode... today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, "Mercy." If you recognize Susan's name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, "Sarah's Child" last May. You can check that out in Episode 28, available at GlitterShip.com or via our feed.

Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing the Future. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Her alter-ego is J. Damask. She tweets as @jolantru.

Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, and the Lambda Award-winning "The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard," among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.

Mercy

by Susan Jane Bigelow

The sea had taken them.

Rion stood by the edge of the water, the waves curling around her bare, metal-and-plastic feet. She knelt by the water and placed her hand in. Sensors registered temperature, composition, motion. But they couldn’t find what Rion had lost.

Here and there the remains of buildings stood like ghastly stick figures, silhouetted in the deepening cool of twilight.

Rion stood and closed her eyes. She stretched her hands out and reached her sensors as far as they would go, but no. Nothing lived on this shore, now. She was alone.

And so she lowered her arms and began walking, one step at a time, into the sea, until the water covered her head and she ]]>

It was Bethany’s job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen’s throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea.

The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears unti [...]

]]>Lessons From A Clockwork Queen

by Megan Arkenberg

I.

It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea.

The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key.

[Full transcript after the cut]

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 38. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

This week, we have a reprint by Megan Arkenberg, "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" with guest reader Sunny Moraine.

Megan Arkenberg's work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies, including Lightspeed, Asimov's, Shimmer, and Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. She has edited the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance since 2008 and was recently the nonfiction editor for Queers Destroy Horror!, a special issue of Nightmare Magazine. She currently lives in Northern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature. Visit her online at http://www.meganarkenberg.com.

Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed,and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.

Lessons From A Clockwork Queen

by Megan Arkenberg

I.

It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea.

The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key.

Having a clockwork queen was very convenient for Her Majesty's councilors. Once a month, they would meet over tea and shortbread cookies and decide what needed to be done; and then they sent for a clockmaker to arrange Violet's brass-and-ivory gears. If she needed to sign a treaty or a death warrant or a new law regulating the fines for overdue library books, the clockmaker would tighten the gears in her fingers so that she could hold a pen. If her councilors thought it was time to host a ball, the clockwork queen had a special set of gears for dancing.

The king of a neighboring kingdom, who was not clockwork and understood very little of the theory involved, decided one day that he should like very much to marry the clockwork queen. Violet's councilors thought this was a thoroughly awful idea and rejected his advances in no uncertain terms. The politics of courtship being what they are, the king took the rejection very much—perhaps too much, if we may say that a king does anything too much—to heart, and he hired an assassin to murder the queen.

The assassin (whose name happened to be Brutus) tried everything. He poisoned Violet's tea, but she—being clockwork and lacking a digestive tract—didn't notice at all. He released a noxious vapor into her chambers while she was bathing in a vat of oil, but she—being clockwork and lacking a respiratory system—didn't care in the slightest. He slipped a poisonous spider into her bed, but she—being made of brass and lacking the sagacity of an arachnophobe—made a nest for it in one of her old hats, and named it Mephistopheles.

Being a clever sort, and no longer quite ignorant of the properties of clockworks, Brutus lay in wait one night on the cold tower stair, and he thrust a knife into Bethany's heart when she came to wind the queen. He took the great silver key and flung in into a very, very deep well.

And that is why a wise clockwork queen owns more than one winding key.

II.

When Bethany died, and the winding key disappeared, and poor Violet ground to a halt like a dead man's watch, her councilors declared a frantic meeting, without even the officious comfort of tea and shortbread cookies. "We must build a new winding key!" declared the eldest councilor, who liked things just so and was not afraid to leave Opportunity out in the cold. "We must declare ourselves regents in the queen's absence and wield the full power of the monarchy!" declared the richest councilor, who had never understood the point of a clockwork queen in the first place. "We must abolish the monarchy and declare a government of liberty, equality and brotherhood!" shouted the youngest councilor, but at just that moment a servant arrived with a tray of cookies, and he was ignored.

"We must," said the quietest councilor when everyone had settled down again, "declare a contest among all the clockmakers in the land to see who is worthy to build our new queen." And since no one had any better ideas, that is what they did.

Over the next months, thousands of designs appeared in crisp white envelopes on the castle's doorstep. Some of the proposed queens had no eyes; the eldest councilor preferred these, so that he could pinch coins from the palace treasury unobserved. Some queens had no tongue; the richest councilor preferred these, so that he could ignore the queen's commands. And one queen had no hands, which all the councilors agreed was quite disturbing and could not, absolutely could not be permitted.

On the last day of the contest, only one envelope appeared at the castle door. It was small and shriveled and yellow, with brown stains at the corners that could have been coffee or blood, and it smelled like bruised violets. When it was opened in the council chamber, everyone fell silent in amazement, and one councilor even dropped his tea. They agreed that this was the queen that must be built, for it was made of iron, and had no heart.

And that is why you should put off making difficult decisions for as long as possible.

III.

When the strange clockmaker, whose name was Isaac, had completed the heartless iron queen—whom, as they did not wish to go against established precedent, the councilors named Iris—the citizens were overjoyed. Not that they cared much for queens, clockwork or otherwise, but they were an optimistic, philosophical people, and Iris was very beautiful. The city became a riot of banners and colorful ribbons and candy vendors on every street, and the stationer's guild declared a holiday, and children bought pastel paper to fold into boats, which they launched on the river.

But as for the clockwork queen herself, she was very beautiful, and there is only one thing to be done with a beautiful queen; she must be married off.

Once again, the councilors gathered over tea and shortbread and, because it was a holiday, a slice or two of rum-cake. There are several proven, efficient ways to marry off a queen, but experts agree that the best way is for her councilors to throw open the palace for a ball and invite every eligible young man in the kingdom to attend. The council spent days drawing up a guest list, excluding only those who were known to be ugly or vulgar or habitually dressed in a particular shade of orange, and when at last everyone was satisfied, they sent out the invitations on scraps of pink lace.

It snowed the night of the ball, great white drifts like cream poured over coffee, with gusts of wind that shook the tower where old Violet had been packed for safekeeping. Very few of the eligible young men were able to make an appearance, and of those, only one in three had a mother who was not completely objectionable and thus unsuitable to be the royal mother-in-law. One of the young men, a very handsome one who smelled faintly of ash and glassblowing, would have been perfect if not for his obnoxious stepmother, but, as it happened, he had never really been interested in queens, clockwork or otherwise, and he settled down quite happily with the head of stationer's guild.

There was one boy who, though his mother was dead and thus not at all objectionable, had nevertheless managed to trouble Iris's councilors. Perhaps it was his hair, in desperate need of cutting, or his threadbare velvet coat, dangerously approaching a certain shade of orange. Perhaps it was the fact that he had come in from the snow and, instead of clustering devotedly around Iris with all the other young men, had sat down by the fire in the great hearth and rubbed color back into his fingertips. Whatever it was, the councilors were quite keen that he should not be permitted, not even be considered, to marry their clockwork queen.

No sooner had they agreed this than Iris began elbowing her iron way through the crowd, pursuing the threadbare coat like a cat bounding after a mouse. The boy poured himself wine at the table in the western alcove, and the queen hurtled after him, upsetting the drinks of those too slow to move out of her path. He stood for a moment on the balcony overlooking the snow-mounded garden, and Iris glided after him into the cold. As he turned to go back into the flame-brightened ballroom, he found his way blocked by the iron queen. Since, unlike the eldest councilor, he was a wonderfully opportunistic man, he dropped to his knees right there in the snow and asked her to marry him. Iris clicked her iron eyelids at him and assented, and that is how Henry Milton, a bookbinder's son, became a king.

And that is why, if you are ever invited to a ball for a heartless iron queen, you should always carry a lodestone in your pocket.

IV.

Henry Milton learned very quickly that it is hard to love a heartless clockwork queen, no matter how beautiful she is. She creaks and whirls in odd ways when you are trying to sleep; she has very few topics of conversation; she knows exactly how long it takes you to do everything. She only follows you when you draw her with a lodestone, and lodestones can feel very heavy after a while, not to mention how they wreak havoc with the lines of a coat.

However, clockwork queens are very good at learning from one another's mistakes, and Iris—instead of having only one winding key and one girl to wind her—had three keys and a set of triplets.

Sadly, even clockwork queens are not immune from the woeful ignorance that assumes that siblings who share birthdates must also share skill sets. Abigail, the youngest triplet, was very good at winding the queen; her hands were soft and gentle, and she wasn't afraid to give the key and extra turn now and then. Monica, the middle triplet, was very bad at winding the queen; she was slow and clumsy and much preferred dictating monographs on economic history and philosophy of education. Elsa, the eldest triplet, was an excellent winder when she remembered—which at first was not often, and became less and less frequent as she fell in love with the king.

All three girls were in love with the king, of course. He was a bookbinder's son with long hair and a lodestone in his pocket and a heartless clockwork wife, and he occasionally wrote poetry, and he harbored a secret and terrible passion for postage stamps—what girl could resist? But Elsa, tall and dark and fluent in three languages, with a good head for maps and a gift for calculus, was the one Henry Milton loved back.

Unless you are afflicted with the woeful ignorance that assumes that sisters who share birthdates must also be immune to romantic jealousy, you can see where this is going.

It was Abigail's idea to put the poison in the queen's oil. Iris would, of course, be immune; only her husband, who kissed her dutifully every morning, and the girl who turned her winding key would feel the poison burning on their skin. And die, of course, but it was not Elsa's death that Abigail and Monica wanted; it was the burning. Siblings, even those who share birthdates, can be very cruel to each other.

But the morning Elsa was to wind the queen, she slept past the cock-crow, and she slept past the dove-song, and she slept past the soft rays of sunlight creeping across her pillow. Henry awoke, saw that his wife had not been wound, and raced down to the sister's rooms. Monica was only half-awake, and if a handsome man with a terrible passion for postage stamps asks you to do something when you are only half-awake, you will probably say yes. Monica stumbled up the stairs and wound the clockwork queen, and by the time she felt the burning in her fingers, it was too late. She died before nightfall.

Henry, as it happened, was saved by his intimate and longstanding friendship with old Mephistopheles, who still lived in Violet's hat, and happened to secrete antidotes to most animal poisons. He and Elsa ran away together and opened a little bookbinding shop in a city no one had ever heard of, though it soon became famous for the quality of its books. Abigail, consumed with guilt, locked herself away in the bowels of the castle, where she grew old and eccentric and developed a keen interest in arachnids. Mephistopheles visited her sometimes, and she is rumored to have stood godmother for all his twelve thousand children.

And that is why you ought to befriend spiders, and anyone else who lives in old hats.

V.

Clearly, if the girls responsible for winding the clockwork queen were so keen on being assassinated or running off to become bookbinders, a more reliable method would have to be devised. The youngest councilor, no longer naive enough to propose abolition of the monarchy before his fellow councilors finished their tea, struck upon the elegant notion of building clockwork girls to wind the clockwork queen. The same clockmaker who had done such excellent work on Violet's treaty-hands and parade-smiles could set the winding girls to perform their function automatically, not a moment too soon or a moment too late. Clockworks cannot be murdered, cannot fall in love, cannot feel jealousy, cannot captivate kings with a talent for tongues and maps and calculus.

"Why, more clockworks," said the youngest councilor—who, though no longer naive, was not a superb critical thinker.

"And who will wind those?"

"Still more clockworks."

"And how will those be wound?"

"By still more clockworks."

"All right, you've had your fun," grumbled a councilor who never spoke much, except to complain. "Clockworks wind clockworks who wind clockworks, and so on for as many iterations as you care. But who winds the first clockworks? Answer me that," he said, and sat back in his chair.

"Why, that's simple," said the youngest councilor. "They don't all wind each other at the same time. We stagger them, like so"—he made a hand gesture that demonstrated his woeful ignorance of the accepted methods of staggered scheduling—"and the last shall wind the first. It can be managed, I'm sure."

He looked so earnest, his eyes wide and blue behind his thick glasses, that all the councilors agreed to give his proposal a trial run. Despite his ignorance of staggered scheduling, he managed to form a functioning timetable, and the winding of the winders went off as smoothly as buttermilk.

And that is how the clockwork queen came to rule a clockwork court, and why clockmakers became the richest men in the kingdom.

VI.

You, being a very rational and astute kind of reader, might be forgiven for thinking that Iris could tolerate her clockwork court, perhaps even love it. However, she could do neither. Clockworks queens are no more liberal over strange whirlings and creakings than their bookbinder husbands are, and they are no more pleased with limited conversation, and they no more wish to be told how long precisely it takes them to do anything. Though they will never admit it, every once in a while, a clockwork queen likes to be late for her appointments.

So one day, Iris opened the great wardrobe in Violet's old rooms and pulled out a beautiful robe of ruby silk and sable, and a pair of sleek leather boots, and a three-cornered hat with a net veil and a spring of dried amaranth blossoms hanging from the front. She powdered her shining skin until it was pale and dull and oiled her gears until they were silent as a mouse's whispers. So disguised, she went out into the city in search of someone to love.

There were many people she did not like. There were merchants who tried to sell her strong-smelling spices, and artists who offered to paint her portrait in completely inappropriate colors, and poets who rhymed "love" and "dove" with no apparent shame. There were carriage drivers who cursed too much, and primly-aproned shopgirls who didn't curse enough. And as always, there were overly friendly people who insisted on wearing a certain shade of orange.

By noon the streets were hot and dusty and crowded, and the amaranth blossoms on Iris's hat were scratching her high forehead, and she was no closer to loving anyone than she had been that morning. With a sigh like the groan of a ship being put out to sea, she sat on a cool marble bench in the center of a park, where the rose petals drooped and the fountain had been dry for decades. While she sat there, lamenting the short-sightedness of her council and the inadequacy of humanity, she smelled a bit of cinnamon on the breeze and saw a girl race past, red and small and sweet.

If Iris had possessed a heart, we would say she lost it in that instant. Since she lacked that imperative piece of anatomy, whose loss would have been cliché and technically inaccurate in any case, we will say instead that a gear she had never known was loose slipped suddenly into joint as she watched Cassia, the perfumer's daughter, race through the park with a delivery for her mother's richest client.

Iris followed Cassia as steadily as if the girl were carrying a lodestone—which, we hasten to assure you, was not the case. On the doorstep of the client's house, after setting the precious package in the mailbox screwed into the bricks, Cassia finally turned and met the gaze of the clockwork queen, who was, in case you have forgotten, most phenomenally beautiful.

Please, said Iris, come to my palace, and I will give you my silver winding key.

And that is why you should never hesitate to run your mother's errands.

VII.

Cassia was a very curious girl. Of course, anyone who accepts the winding key of a complete stranger in a public market is bound to have some small streak of curiosity, but Cassia's curiosity was broad as a boulevard, shaded with flowering trees. She was always very faithful about winding Iris, but when she was done she would sneak off into the cellars and the attics and the secret places in the castle. She found albums of postage stamps Henry Milton had long ago hidden away, and some old diagrams for building a queen with no eyes, and a box of twelve thousand baptismal certificates written in the smallest script imaginable. One day, she found a cold stone staircase winding up into the towers, and in the room at the top of the stairs, she found Violet.

Of course the council hadn't just disposed of her when she ceased to run. Do you throw out your mother when she stops reading bedtime stories to you? Do you throw out your lover when he stops bringing you cherries dipped in chocolate? We should hope not; at the very least, you keep them for parts. And so Violet remained in her tower room standing precisely as she had been the moment her spring wound down.

Violet was not as beautiful as Iris. But she had sharp cheekbones and a strong nose and a rather intelligent expression, considering that she had no control over how she looked when she finally stopped short. In some angles of light, she appeared positively charming. Of course, this was all irrelevant, because her winding key was still at the bottom of a very deep well, and she could not move or speak or love anyone until she was wound again.

Every day for a year, Cassia climbed the long cold stairs to Violet's room and stared at the lifeless queen. She memorized the way the sunlight looked at noon, kissing the bronze forehead and the wire-fine eyelashes. She came to love the smell of dust and cold metal, the creak of the wooden floors beneath her feet. Finally, after a year of staring and wondering and hoping, quietly and desperately, Cassia raised herself on tiptoe and kissed Violet's clockwork lips.

She felt the bronze mouth warming strangely beneath her own. She heard the ringing click of wire eyelashes against sharp metal cheekbones, and the click of gears in clockwork fingers as a gentle pair of hands folded around her waist. And Violet took a deep, shuddering breath.

"You," she said, "are far too good to belong to a heartless queen."

"You," Cassia said, "are far too charming to gather dust at the top of a tower."

That night, they slipped from the castle while all the clockwork court was sleeping. Poor Iris, having dismissed her clockwork winding girls, was left alone and untended in her rooms. The court continued to wind each other on an ingenious schedule, never noting their queen's absence, and so the aristocracy slid ever closer to the precipice of decadence and anarchy, all because of one girl's curiosity.

And that is why it is important to clean out your attic once or twice in a century.

VIII.

But even to love that begins in an attic, surrounded by sun-gilded dust motes and the creak of wooden floors, world enough and time are not promised. Cassia and Violet had barely crossed the kingdom's forest-shrouded eastern border when they came upon a stone bridge, and beneath it a rushing white-crested river, and beneath that—a troll.

Trolls were not very common in the kingdom ruled by clockwork queens; as a rule, they dislike metal and shiny things and anything that requires winding keys, their fingers being terribly thick and clumsy. This left Cassia and Violet somewhat ignorant of the customs of trolls. In this particular case, the custom was a full bushel of apples and a yard of purple silk, and a brick or two for the house that the troll was resolutely building somewhere in the forest. Appleless, silkless, brickless, Cassia and Violet began to pick their way across the slippery bridge when there was a crash like the felling of a hundred trees, and a great cold wave swallowed the bridge before them. When the water receded, there was the troll, bumpy and green and heavy-handed, and standing right in their path.

"Where is my toll?" she grumbled, her voice like wet gravel.

Violet and Cassia, woefully ignorant of trolls and their curious pronunciation of voiceless alveolar plosives, stared in amazement.

"My toll," the troll repeated. Confronted by the same blank stares, she tried the same phrase in the languages of the kingdom to the south, and the kingdom to the north, and the kingdoms of dragonflies and leopard-princes and Archaea. (She was an exceptionally well-educated troll.) It was not until she attempted the language of timepieces, all clicks and whirls and enjoinders to hasten, that Violet understood.

"Your toll?" she repeated. "But we haven't got anything of the kind!"

"Then you'll have to swim," the troll said, and seeing that there was no chance of enriching her stores of apples or silk or bricks, she plopped herself down in the middle of the bridge and would say nothing further.

Violet and Cassia climbed down from the bridge and stood on the shingle of smooth and shining stones at the river's edge. Cassia shivered, and even Violet felt the water's chill in the spaces between her gears. But there was no crossing the bridge, not with the troll crouching on it like a tree growing out of a path, and there was certainly no returning to the kingdom and the court of the heartless queen. Cassia rolled the cuffs of her trousers to her knees and stepped into the frigid flow.

The current tugged fiercely at her ankles, icy and quick. She felt the river's pebbly floor shifting beneath her bootheels and lost her balance with a tiny shriek. Violet splashed after her, brass arms spread for balance, and that was the last Cassia saw of her beloved before the river swallowed the clockwork queen.

And that is why you should always, always pay the troll's custom, no matter how many apples she demands.

IX.

With Violet gone, there was nothing for Cassia to do but continue her journey east. The days were brief and quiet and the nights were cold and hollow, and the road dwindled until it was nothing but a few grains of gravel amid the twisted roots. As is the way of things in geography and enchanted forests, Cassia had soon walked so far east that she was going westward. And at the westernmost edge of the world, she found herself in the garden of a low-roofed cottage that smelled of coffee and bruised violets.

Despite her terrible grief, Cassia could not help but be delighted by the tiny garden. There were daisies made of little ivory gears, and bluebells of jingling copper, and chrysanthemums so intricate that the flapping of a butterfly's wings could disrupt their mechanism and require them to be reset. There were roses that hummed like hives of bees, and lilies that wept tears of pale golden oil. And above all there were violets, branches and branches of violets, whose pounded petals could be added to any food, and convey upon it healing properties.

"I am glad to see that my garden makes you smile," the clockmaker said from his window. It was Isaac, of course, that same clockmaker who had built heartless Iris—even within so strange a profession, there are few people whose houses smell of coffee and bruised violets.

Cassia jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to him, the color high in her brown cheeks. The clockmaker, poor man, who had lived so lonely at the western edge of the world and had never seen a human being blush, fell instantly in love.

Most people react very irrationally to their first taste of love. They form silly ideas about keeping the object of their affection near to them forever, and think of names for their children, and even dream of the days when they are both ancient and sitting on wicker chairs overlooking the sea. Or they chafe at the thought of being under their beloved's spell, and immediately think of a thousand ways to be rid of them—by accident, by cruelty, by hiding from them for years, all of which can become terribly impractical. Still others try to pretend that it never happened, and behave indifferently to the object of their affections, but of course something always gives them away—an accidental touch that becomes a caress, a too-gentle look, an extra teaspoon of sugar in the beloved's cup of tea.

But clockmakers are by nature quite rational, and this particular clockmaker was even more rational than most. Isaac weighed the dangers of each possible response and in the same instant plucked three clockwork flowers from his garden: a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets. Cassia gnawed her lip in curiosity as he held the flowers out to her, his hands shaking minutely like a wire too tightly wound, and bid her choose one.

She took a long time to choose. The flowers were all so beautiful, and each one seemed to sing to her of the weight of her choice. But of course she could not know—the flowers could not know—only Isaac himself knew the true price of each stem.

If Cassia had chosen the rose, singing and sweet-scented, Isaac would have knelt and asked her to marry him. If she had chosen the lily, weeping and pale, he would have strangled her with a purple silk scarf and buried her beneath the amaranth bush at his bedroom window. But since she choose the violets, quiet and dark, he swallowed his passion and his fear, and served her a cup of salty chicken soup, and sent her on her way.

And that is why you must always remember the names of lost lovers.

X.

So Cassia found herself again on the borders of Iris's kingdom. This land was ruled, not by a clockwork queen, but by a mortal man, and everything was cold and covered in gray ash. The land lay under a curse, an apple-peddler warned Cassia when they sheltered for the night beneath the same lightning-wracked tree. The king was dying of consumption, and his daughter, who happened to be a very powerful witch, plunged the kingdom into drought and ice until someone came forth to cure her father. It was, the peddler said, a beautiful show of filial devotion, if ultimately quite useless.

Cassia listened to the story and said nothing, chewing it over like a dusty bite of apple, and fingering the spring of violets in the pocket of her coat.

Another day of walking brought her within the shadow of the dying king's castle. Cassia shuddered to see the coat of arms blazoned on the door, for this king was the same one who, many years before, had sent Brutus to assassinate Violet. Again, Cassia fingered the clockwork petals in her pocket. Then she went to the door and knocked.

A tall woman answered, her face pale as a disk of bone. "What do you want?" she snarled.

"I am here to cure the king," said Cassia. "But first, you must promise to give me whatever I ask for when he is returned to health."

"If you can cure my father," said the princess, "I will give you this kingdom and everything in it." And she led Cassia through the winding hallways to the king's deathbed in the palace's heart.

Cassia rolled up her sleeves and stoked the fire in the room's great hearth until it blazed like sunlight on apple skins. She sent the servants for a black iron kettle and a wooden spoon, and some chicken bones and a gallon of clean water. When she had boiled the bones to a clear golden broth, she added salt and carrots and soft white potatoes, and slivers of celery and sweet-smelling thyme. She used a silver ladle to dish the soup into a peasant's wooden bowl, which held in its splintered bottom one single petal from a clockwork violet.

When the king had eaten the soup, color returned to his bone-pale cheeks and his lungs became clean and whole again. He leapt up from his bed and embraced his daughter, whose black eyes sparkled in the firelight.

"The king is saved," the princess said. "What is it you wish from me?"

"Bring me Brutus," said Cassia.

The assassin was found and brought before her. He knelt at her feet and trembled, certain she had come to kill him for the loss of Violet's winding key—he was not ignorant, after all, of the properties of clockworks, though he knew precious little of lovers' first kisses. And so he was astounded to learn that Violet was no longer gathering dust in Iris's attic, but trapped beneath a river's icy foam.

"I want you to bring me my clockwork queen," said Cassia, "and I want her alive."

"You will have her," swore Brutus, who had never failed on a mission.

And that is why you should learn the reason behind every pestilence, and never be afraid to call in favors.

XI.

Brutus, as you will surely recall, was both very clever and rather well-informed about the subtle machinations of clockwork. He also had an abnormally high tolerance for frigid water and the alveolar plosives of trolls. And so he fished poor Violet from the river with no more trouble than a child pulling sweet-fleshed shellfish from a tide pool. But water, particularly cold and muddy river-water, is vicious to clockwork, and no matter how he shook her or called to her or kissed her metal lips, Brutus could not bring Violet back to life.

But he had never failed on a mission, and he was not about to begin failing when his mission was the reunion of true lovers. He wrapped Violet in his own cloak and sat her on the back of his own horse, and for nearly a year he wandered the land, looking for the woman or man or beast who could fix the clockwork queen.

And, as is the way of things in geography and hopeless quests, Brutus soon found himself in a clockwork garden that smelled of coffee and bruised violets.

Isaac was there—where would he have gone?—sitting now on his front porch, composing sonnets to Cassia's brown skin and sweet voice. He caught sight of sunlight glinting off of Violet's bronze forehead long before he could make out the shape of Brutus stumbling along beside her. He folded his legs up beneath him and leaned against the brick wall of his garden, sucking the ink-bitter tip of his pen, until his visitors were close enough to call to.

"I suppose you want me to fix her," Isaac said. "Oh, not to worry, it can be done. In fact, there are three ways to wake a dead clockwork." And he plucked three clockwork flowers from the sweet-smelling soil and held them out to Brutus—a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets.

Brutus was desperately tired, and in no mood for making such a choice. Assassins, unlike perfumer's daughters, are well-versed in the more obscure avenues of flower symbolism, and he knew that a rose meant a trap, a lily meant strangling, and violets were a wildcard—they meant whatever the gardener wished them to mean. He did not know the three ways to wake a dead clockwork—in fact, no one but Isaac knew those, so you can hardly expect us to tell them to you—but his instinct told him quite accurately that all three required blood and sacrifice of some kind. In short, he knew he faced a very dire decision, and had no good way to make the choice.

Then, quite suddenly, he remembered the sprig of violets he had seen peeking out of Cassia's coat pocket. Sighing in relief, he took the violets from Isaac's hand. The clockmaker smiled in the enigmatic way of men who were expecting as much, and set about repairing the queen with oil and wrenches and a fine steel screwdriver.

And that is why you should always begin by trying what has worked before, especially with clockmakers, who as a rule are so terribly conventional.

XII.

The reunion between Cassia and Violet was perhaps too happy to be described here, for the only way to even approximate it is through an unlikely and wholly disagreeable string of paradoxes. Let it suffice to say that they were happy as few people have ever been, with or without the benefits of exotic wine or beautiful lovers or victory in impossible battles, or cold-skinned apples or soup recipes or an encyclopedic knowledge of flower symbolism. Isaac wrought a new winding key for Violet, and Violet gave it into Cassia's keeping, and Cassia lovingly wound her lover every morning until the day, many years later, she died in her clockwork arms.

Very slowly—but not with too unseemly a sadness—Violet dug a grave in a forest beneath the dappled shadows of oak leaves. She lay Cassia on a bed of flower petals and cinnamon and climbed in beside her, and she pulled the earth down over both of them. Since there was no one left to wind her, Violet soon ran down in the cinnamon-scented darkness, and she and Cassia sleep peacefully in the same deep grave, as lovers always wish to.

And that is why a wise clockwork queen has only one winding key.

XIII.

Of course, with or without a winding key, no clockwork is immortal. Iris and her court eventually ran down, and Isaac's garden withered, and the price of clockwork plummeted, ruining the kingdom's economy.

And that is why you should invest in dependable things, like lodestones and assassins and bridges guarded by trolls, and steel screwdrivers and enchanted violets, and when you learn a good recipe for chicken soup you should write it down in detail, in case some day you fall in love.

END

"Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" was originally published in Fantasy Magazine and is copyright Megan Arkenberg, 2011.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a poem by Joyce Chng, and an original story by Susan Jane Bigelow.

]]>Lessons From A Clockwork Queen
by Megan Arkenberg
I.
It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds ...Lessons From A Clockwork Queen

by Megan Arkenberg

I.

It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea.

The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key.

[Full transcript after the cut]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 38. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

This week, we have a reprint by Megan Arkenberg, "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" with guest reader Sunny Moraine.

Megan Arkenberg's work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies, including Lightspeed, Asimov's, Shimmer, and Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. She has edited the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance since 2008 and was recently the nonfiction editor for Queers Destroy Horror!, a special issue of Nightmare Magazine. She currently lives in Northern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature. Visit her online at http://www.meganarkenberg.com.

Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed,and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.

Lessons From A Clockwork Queen

by Megan Arkenberg

I.

It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea.

The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and ma]]>

She feels the pain before she fully wakes up, stuck in that half-space between slumber and cold daylight. For a moment she doesn’t understand. Pain. A bone-deep ache—no, deeper than her bones. Soul-deep. Her eyes crack open.

Fuck, it’s freezing.

Sylvia closes her eyes again, opens them, glares balefully at the open window. She waves a hand, hoping for a little miracle, for everything to fall into place, but the window-frame barely twitches. Might have been telekinesis, might have been her vision blurring from the pain. Her fucking useless powers are all the more fucking useless on bad pain days. She doesn’t want to move, because she knows if she moves it’ll get worse. She has to get out of bed. The cat needs feeding. For a moment her head is swimming, and she can’t remember the [...]

]]>The Little Dream

by Robin M. Eames

She feels the pain before she fully wakes up, stuck in that half-space between slumber and cold daylight. For a moment she doesn't understand. Pain. A bone-deep ache—no, deeper than her bones. Soul-deep. Her eyes crack open.

Fuck, it's freezing.

Sylvia closes her eyes again, opens them, glares balefully at the open window. She waves a hand, hoping for a little miracle, for everything to fall into place, but the window-frame barely twitches. Might have been telekinesis, might have been her vision blurring from the pain. Her fucking useless powers are all the more fucking useless on bad pain days. She doesn't want to move, because she knows if she moves it'll get worse. She has to get out of bed. The cat needs feeding. For a moment her head is swimming, and she can't remember the cat's name.

[Full transcript after the cut]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 37! This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

We're currently running a little behind again, but should be caught up soon. Our Spring 2017 issue is now out, and that's available at glittership.com/buy for anyone who would like to read all of the stories before they come out on the podcast. Our issues are also available as a patron reward, so if you support GlitterShip via Patreon (patreon.com/keffy), you can check out the issue there.

First, we'll have a poem by Joanne Rixon and a story by Robin M. Eames.

Joanne Rixon lives in the Pacific Northwest with her rescue chihuahua. She mostly writes speculative fiction; this is her first published poem. You can follow her on twitter @JoanneRixon.

Robin M. Eames is a 23 year old freelance writer and artist living in Sydney, Australia. They graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, majoring in History and Gender Studies. Their work has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Glitterwolf, ARNA, Hermes, and in the anthology Broken Worlds edited by Jack Burgos. Robin uses they/them/their pronouns. Their interests include comparative mythology, queer and disability theory & activism, cats, black tea, and tattoos. You can find their twitter at @robinmarceline and their website at robinmeames.org.

I stayed up all night waiting for the election results and then...

by Joanne Rixon

the morning after my skin began to peel.But I haven’t been in the sun, I said.It’s November and also I’m afraid the cancer will return.But still my fingerprints came off whole, skin curledoff my biceps in sheets.It broke at the wrinkles of my elbows, andwhere my skin was thin and dry it flaked: the tips of my hipbones,my collarbones, stretching.

My hair also fell out but that had been happeningfor weeks so it wasn’t surprising. Only the speed of it.Giant handfuls of hair clogged the drain.My scalp turned blotchy as a piebald horse,paler than new cheese, and then began to split.As more layers unloosened, detached—they got damp and rubbery the deeper they went—underneath something began to be visible:

gray-brown and nubbled surface;antler-hard to the touch, and I couldn’t stoptouching. It itched.My sister looked at me sideways, poking my shoulderto see for herself.Don’t be afraid, I told her. I’m not.I’m not afraid at all, I said.I didn’t say it. I tried to say it but I couldn’t make it wordsor anything else but small stones falling from my lips.My teeth, little diamonds, ached for somethingto bite.

END

The Little Dream

by Robin M. Eames

She feels the pain before she fully wakes up, stuck in that half-space between slumber and cold daylight. For a moment she doesn't understand. Pain. A bone-deep ache—no, deeper than her bones. Soul-deep. Her eyes crack open.

Fuck, it's freezing.

Sylvia closes her eyes again, opens them, glares balefully at the open window. She waves a hand, hoping for a little miracle, for everything to fall into place, but the window-frame barely twitches. Might have been telekinesis, might have been her vision blurring from the pain. Her fucking useless powers are all the more fucking useless on bad pain days. She doesn't want to move, because she knows if she moves it'll get worse. She has to get out of bed. The cat needs feeding. For a moment her head is swimming, and she can't remember the cat's name.

Moth. The cat's name is Moth.

Sylvia moves her shoulders experimentally, and is rewarded by a sharp cracking noise. She groans, swings her legs over the edge of the bed, gets stuck. Out of breath. Moth meows plaintively from outside her bedroom door. People say that only humans can develop supercapabilities but Sylvia swears that damn cat's psychic.

"Coming," she says. It's a lie. She still can't move. Fucking fibro, fucking cat, fucking Sydney winter weather, fucking rubbish excuse for telekinesis. She didn't wear pajamas to bed and there are goosebumps on her arms. She left her cane next to the front door last night. Yesterday was a 3, maybe a 4. A good day. Today's a 7. It'll be an 8 if she overexerts herself.

1 is painless. "Normal." 10, presumably, is dead.

Sylvia steels herself, and then rolls off the bed and lands on the floor with a thump. She can't quite muster the energy to stand up, so she shuffles out of her bedroom on her hands and knees, naked, quietly glad that she doesn't have a housemate to witness her total lack of dignity. On a good day Sylvia can hover. Only a little, about a foot or two above the ground. Fucking typical that her powers are only functional on the days she doesn't need them.

"Hello," she says to Moth. He meows at her and then licks her nose.

Cane. Cat. Meds. Breakfast. Cane's next to the front door. She tries not to think about how long it takes her to get there, but things are a little easier after that; she levers herself up and hobbles vaguely into the kitchen. Moth rubs against her legs and she startles, almost falls over. Cat. Sylvia cracks open a tin of tuna and he immediately starts purring. Her meds are all the way up on the high shelf, and her shoulders protest just looking at the stretch. That was a great idea, Sylvia-of-yesterday, just bloody brilliant, put your meds where you can't reach them.

Breakfast. Her mind stalls. There are eggs in the fridge but she's out of oil or butter to fry them in, there's cereal but no milk, there's bread. Toast. Toast is easy. Sylvia fumbles a knife out of the drawer, jam, the bread, and sinks to the floor, leaning against the kitchen counter. She concentrates, blinks, her eyes burn, and the toast begins to sizzle faintly. Technically it's laser vision, but Brian calls it her toast vision, because it isn't good for much else. Sometimes she can light cigarettes.

Knife, jam, bread. Don’t warp the knife. Sometimes Sylvia bends cutlery when she’s stressed, or leaves little fingerprint-shaped dents in metal doorknobs. A hand tremor makes her fumble the knife, but the metal stays intact. She blinks tiredly at her toast for a moment. Bites down and savors the sour-sweetness. Lid back on the jam, jam back up on the kitchen counter. Sylvia's still sitting on the floor. The cat, finished with the tuna, wanders nonchalantly over and sits on her outstretched legs.

Meds. Still on the shelf. Escitalopram, estradiol, progesterone, spironolactone, rabeprazole, riboflavin, propranolol, ibuprofen and paracetamol for moderately miserable days, tramadol for really fucking murderously miserable days. Missing a day of meds because she can't get up off the floor. It's sort of funny. Sylvia-of-yesterday was a useless bum and she's never putting her meds on the high shelf ever again.

It's a 7 day. Not yet an 8. If she really concentrates… She narrows her eyes at the shelf, flicks her fingers, and her pillbox starts to wobble precariously towards her. Sylvia doesn't dare to breathe. It moves closer—closer—and then twitches and flies right across the room, smacking hard into the opposite wall. Pills scatter everywhere. The cat pounces and starts batting them about the floor. Sylvia closes her eyes, and lets her head fall backwards with a thunk.

The day doesn’t really get better from there, but she manages to corral her meds, and get off the floor, eventually. Clothes. Jeans or skirt? How likely is it that she’ll get bashed today? Jeans. No energy to shave. Lydia down the road can shave by shapeshifting. Rude.

There are three rubber wristbands on her dresser. One of them says SHE/HER/HERS, the second THEY/THEM/THEIRS, and the third HE/HIM/HIS. Sylvia looks at them for a moment. Contemplates. Puts on the second one.

Sylvie locks the door behind them, checks their pockets—keys, wallet, phone—and limps their way to the bus stop. On the bus on the way into uni there’s a businesswoman with huge, bright white wings, one of which is in a splint. The driver argues with her momentarily about whether she should have to buy an extra ticket or not. Sylvie rolls their eyes. The winged woman bumps into several passengers, apologizes, manages to swing her wings around so that they’re not in anyone’s way. When she gets off at the next stop she leaves a thin trail of shed feathers behind her.

Sylvie presses their head against the window, feels the shuddering of the bus beneath them.

When they get into the lecture theatre, Brian immediately waves them over and then presents his middle finger for inspection. Sylvie raises their eyebrows, and Brian pouts. “I’ve got a papercut.”

“Oh, come on—”

“Please?”

Sylvie grumbles under their breath, but puts their hand over Brian’s, brown over darker brown. They don’t glow, or hum, and their eyes don’t roll back into their head, but when they move their hand away Brian’s papercut is gone. Would be really fucking nice if their healing factor worked on anything worse than papercuts. Abracadabra, fibromyalgia away.

The lecture is on Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, Rousseau, the right to property, the right to vote, the civil rights movement, women’s rights, trans rights, super rights. Sylvie falls asleep halfway through. In the tutorial afterwards someone says “transsexuals—I’m sorry, is that the right term?” and looks at Sylvie expectantly. Brian snickers under his breath and then someone uses the word “aborigine” and he stops laughing and starts cutting into them about it. Why are the Gadigal mob so angry and drunk all the time, the student wants to know. I’ll tell you fucking why says Brian.

Last week after class some fucker told Brian and Sylvie “go back to where you came from”. Brian laughed so hard that he cried, and then he yelled so much that his voice went hoarse and he sounded like Batman. Go back to where you came from, go home, get back on your boat. Sylvie used to work in a coffee shop in Surry Hills, before the fibro got so bad that they couldn’t stand for long periods. Sometimes white boys would try to flirt with them, always that expectant look, “where are you from, no, I mean where are you from”. Sylvie’s mum’s family were early settlers, Australian for four generations back, but the fifth generation were from the Pearl River Delta, so apparently that’s all that matters. Sylvie’s dad was mixed, Latino and something else, their mum wasn’t sure. His last name was Rodriguez. They met on their gap years. Where is Sylvie from? Hell if they know.

Brian’s rant winds down and the other student looks thoroughly cowed. Sylvie grins at him from the corner of their mouth. Brian sits back, legs splayed open, arms thrown over the seats beside him, owning the room.

“See you at the rally tomorrow?” Brian asks, when the tute finishes.

“Yeah,” says Sylvie.

It’s not far from the university to the hospital, but Sylvie’s back is aching, and their head is throbbing, so they catch the bus again. There’s an echoing in their ears that doesn’t bode well. Their ENT specialist isn’t sure if it’s superhearing or just hypersensitivity to light and sound, but either way it usually leads to a migraine. Most supercapabilities show up around puberty, or even earlier, but Sylvie’s powers have been popping up randomly for years. It would be fun if any of them were actually useful.

The woman at reception waves Sylvie through, and they trace their way over the memorised path, through the corridors, up two floors in the lift, tap lightly on the door.

“Oh, hi _________,” says Sylvie’s mum. Her voice is barely more than a whisper.

“Supercapable,” corrects Sylvie’s mother, wrinkling her nose. Sylvie just shrugs, puts their hand over their mother’s. Lymphoma. Not much their shitty little healing factor can do about it. But maybe it helps in some small way.

Their mother smiles, faintly, and starts to hum. Sylvie doesn’t recognize the tune, but it follows them out of the hospital, back to their flat, and into their dreams that night.

The next day is a 6. Low-level aches all over, nausea, headache, sore throat. It’s a blessing after yesterday. Sylvie actually manages to shave and brush their teeth. Same wristband as yesterday: THEY/THEM/THEIRS. They hesitate at their wardrobe, mindful of the rally later today, but—fuck it. Skirt and leggings it is. Their shirt says IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU INSIST THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS.

Their phone buzzes, and a picture of Brian pops up, tongue sticking out and green glitter on his eyelashes. The message reads: are u still coming to the rally

Yes, they type back.

It takes a moment for their phone to buzz again. good bring ur cane umbrella it’s going to rain later

Cane umbrella defeats the purpose of the cane, Sylvie replies. Can’t use it to walk when it’s up over my ears. Who thought that was a good idea smh

shut up it’s a miracle of fucking technoglogy, says Brian.

*technology, says Brian.

Sylvie smiles, puts their phone in their pocket, and brings a raincoat.

Sylvie and Brian meet at the coffee shop around the corner from Town Hall, where the rally’s going to start. These things always take forever to get going. Sylvie would rather skip the speeches and self-congratulation at the beginning, the harping on of various activist groups, the factional side-eyeing, the pointless circulating petitions.

Sylvie inhales. Coffee beans and chocolate. Scent memory to two years ago, scratchy uniform, ten hour workdays. They fumble their way into a booth seat, propping their cane up beside them, cursing when it slips and falls under the table.

“You’re too young to be such a crotchety old grandma,” says Brian, then glances at their wristband. Corrects himself. “Grandperson.”

“Grandparent,” says Sylvie, and flicks him on the ear.

“I went on a date last night,” says Brian, waggling his eyebrows.

“How’d it go?”

He smiles, long and slow. Sylvie cackles. At least someone’s getting laid. The last date they went on was a mess, months ago, some girl they met on OkCupid. The girl walked through the door and her face fell like a stone. Sylvie doesn’t even know what it was—the cane, the color of their skin, their lipsticked mouth surrounded by stubble. Hell, maybe it was the bright little “super in every sense” pin on their backpack. Maybe some combination of all of them. The girl fled like her heels were on fire.

They bum around in the café for a bit before they finally join the rally, a huge throng of people clutching banners and posters and shouting witty slogans about Turnbull, Baird, about the clusterfuck of the last year of Lib government, about how Tony Abbott is afraid of women, gays, supers, and people in boats. Abbott’s sister is a supercapable lesbian, Sylvie remembers. Must make for awkward family dinners.

The march begins like a living thing, moving forward in slow, lurching bursts. Sylvie doesn’t even remember what this one is about—some amendment to the super anti-discrimination bill. There’s a rally every weekend these days, it feels like. Which isn’t to say that they’re not important—even just marching, even if nothing comes of it, that’s something. Even the little victories are something.

It’s nice, to be surrounded like this, by people like them. People with wings and tails and weird hair and rainbow t-shirts. There’s a queer bloc marching a ways behind them, and a ways behind that there’s a group marching for supercapable refugee rights. There’s an energy in the air, something sparking and growing.

And suddenly Brian is clinging hard to Sylvie’s arm and muttering, “Shit, fuck, fuckshit, it’s my fucking ex, let’s get out of here.” Sylvie follows his gaze to a young white girl with an undercut and purple eyebrows.

He snorts. “No, you lemon, my ex-dealer. Shit let’s get out of here before she sees us—”

Too late. The girl’s eyes are widening with recognition, and she smiles, like a shark, raising her hand over her head to wave. Brian squeaks and pulls hard on Sylvie’s wrist, tugging them through the crowd, stepping on people’s feet and not bothering to apologize. There’s some sort of commotion at the side of the road, people yelling and shoving, and a kid with yellow eyes sends bright illusionary glimmers up into the air. A second later there’s a crack and a hiss and there’s white fog spreading around their legs, only the fog stings horribly, and Sylvie starts to cough, helplessly, tears streaming from their eyes.

“It’s tear gas,” chokes out Brian, covering his eyes with his sleeve.

“I—fucking—know,” says Sylvie, wheezing, pulling him to the side. Brian’s power is really quite formidable but not, actually, particularly useful—he can analyze the composition of substances, tell you their chemical makeup via touch. He makes a damn good cocktail.

“Come on,” says Brian, “let’s go, let’s—fuck—”

They stagger out of the crowd, coughing and crying, people shrieking around them. The riot police are wading in now, herding and shoving people fairly indiscriminately. Someone falls down and cries out, a high screech, as the convulsing mass of people around them heaves and moans. This happens every time. Usually the cane offers Sylvie some small measure of protection—it looks bad when the Sydney Morning Herald releases photos of cops beating on cripples.

For a moment Sylvie thinks they’re going to get out of this okay, but then Brian falls into a cop’s riot shield and everything goes to shit. The cop yells at him, and Brian yells back, and then the handcuffs are out, and everything sort of goes the way you’d expect.

Brian was right—it starts to rain.

Hours later, Sylvie has been arguing with the officer at the desk of the police station for longer than they care to admit, but the desk cop won’t budge. It’s bullshit, it’s all bullshit. Brian’s being charged with resisting arrest. Arrest for what? Arrest for resisting. Also, apparently, teetotaler Brian, Brian who’s been sober for more than six months now, Brian who went through screaming withdrawal and came out grinning on the other side, is being drunk and disorderly, so he’s “cooling off” in a cell. A breathalyser test “isn’t necessary”. Sylvie’s nerves are jangling, and the statistics of Aboriginal deaths in custody are parading relentlessly through their head.

It’s another two hours and a different officer at the desk before they let Brian be released into Sylvie’s custody. The new officer has flat, pale hair, and a dead-eyed look in her eyes. “___ ______, yes, she’s free to go. No bail.” Sylvie holds in their snarl.

Brian’s left eye is bruised and his hair is tousled when they let him out. He’s silent all the way out of the station, until they reach the sidewalk, and then he swears loudly and kicks a tree. His voice cracks. He stands there for a moment, panting hard, whole body shuddering with it.

“Let’s go,” he says, eventually. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

He stays at Sylvie’s place that night. Neither of them want to be alone. When they get in the door Sylvie swaps out their pronoun wristband, ties his hair up in a knot. He doesn’t usually feel comfortable wearing masculinity—it’s a skin he was forced to live in for so long that it still, sometimes, hums hotly through his blood, makes his nerves feel like they’re on fire. But it’s a part of him nonetheless.

Brian disappears into the bathroom, and Sylvester hears the sound of water running. Moth starts to wind around his legs, purring, nudging his head against the hem of Sylvester’s skirt. Sylvester sinks to the floor, drops his cane with a clatter, and pulls Moth close. Buries his face in his fur. The cat meows indignantly, wriggling a little, and then settles.

Sylvester puts the kettle on. After a while Brian emerges from the shower, hair damp, shoulders bowed low.

It’s a long night for both of them. Brian sleeps in Sylvester’s bed, their legs tangled around each other, tossing and turning. Every hour or so Sylvester touches a hand lightly to Brian’s brow, and the bruise turns purple-blue, and then grey-green, and then faintly yellow. Irritation from tear gas doesn’t take too long for him to heal, but bruises are different, pressed deeper into flesh.

Sometime in the black morning, Sylvester gets out of bed and goes to sit out on the balcony. He sheds his pronoun wristbands to sleep, and sometimes it feels like a shedding of skin. Syl hates wearing pyjamas, even in winter. The clothes feel strangling. It feels like Syl is being reborn every morning, naked, cold, confused. Gender takes so much energy to maintain. To navigate. Sometimes Syl wishes it all just didn’t exist. It seems so much easier for other people.

It’s a cloudy night. A few stars wink through the scattered smears of sky. There’s no wind, but sometimes a shiver runs through Syl’s body. Skin open to the air. It feels like Syl can breathe in the universe.

It’s hours before the sun begins to rise. Sylvia can hear the birds. She sighs, stretches. Turns back into the apartment. Feeds the cat. Makes tea with honey, bends the spoon. A few tea leaves escape into her cup, and she concentrates, twists her fingers, pulls them out without even touching the liquid. She steps up into the air, just to see if she can, and stays there, hovering a few centimetres above the ground. Only a few centimetres, and she can only maintain it for a second. But for a second she felt like she could fly.

After a while Brian emerges with what looks like the contents of Sylvia’s entire bedroom wrapped around him. Bedspread, sheets, scarves, socks. There might be a pillow somewhere in there. “What are you doing up so fucking early.”

“Made you tea.”

“Thanks,” he says, grasping for the mug. He waves a hand awkwardly at his eye. “Thanks for this, too.”

Sylvia just shrugs. “It’s not much.” The guilt is going to eat her up from the inside, gnaw out her bones. She couldn’t do anything. All that time Brian spent in lockup, hours more than he should have, and she couldn’t do anything. Some supers can phase through walls, break iron with their bare hands. Sylvia can heal bruises and stubbed toes. Bend her spoons. And make toast.

Maybe Brian reads some of that in her eyes, because his next words are weirdly determined. “Don’t say that.” There’s a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. “It’s useful. It’s little, but it’s useful. Sometimes we need little things.”

Sylvia bites down on her tongue, tastes blood in her mouth. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

For the next few hours they stick by each other, never more than a few feet apart. They catch the bus into uni in silence. Sylvia doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. The police station hasn’t contacted them. They only have one class together, but neither wants to leave the other alone, so they go to Brian’s morning lecture and Sylvia streams hers online in their lunch break. Brian is quiet, listless.

The day is already so dull, so draining, that it’s almost not surprising when the girl from the rally yesterday sidles up to them at the campus food court. Her eyebrows are still purple but she’s not smiling this time.

“Hey,” she says. “Hey, Brian.”

Brian’s head is pillowed in his arms. He cracks an eye to look at her. “Go away, Liv. I got fucking nicked last night. I don’t need this right now.”

“That sucks, man,” she says. She seems genuine. “Look, I’ve just got this guy who wants to talk to you. Just one job. Nothing big. He’s so keen though, mate, and he’s got the money, he’s a real fucking big spender.”

“Not interested,” says Brian. He closes his eyes again.

“Come on, Bri, for old times’ sake? I know you went to druggie rehab or whatever, this isn’t about that, I’m not trying to sell you anything. This guy just wants to talk to you.”

“He said no,” says Sylvia.

Liv barely spares a glance at her, and tries to move closer to Brian, but Sylvia blocks her with her cane. The girl gets angry then. “Hey, what the fuck? Put that thing away, dude, I don’t even know you. Me and Brian go way back. Brian, listen—”

Sylvia concentrates, feels her eyes heat up, glow red, and Liv pales a bit and backs away. Hands raised. “Fine, fuck, no need to get all batshit on me,” she says. “I’ll see you later, Bri.”

She leaves, and Sylvia blinks, feels her eyes go back to normal. It was a bluff—the most she could have done is give the girl a spot of sunburn—but Liv didn’t know that.

“I’m sorry about that,” says Brian into his arms. “I’m really—I’m sorry. And I’m sorry she called you dude. You didn’t need to do that. Thanks.”

Sylvia doesn’t say anything, but she puts her arm around his shoulders, and some of the tension relaxes out of his spine.

“She’s a super too, you know?” he says absently. “Low-level empath. I guess it explains why she’s such a dick all the time. Having to feel everyone. Lying to you. Feeling their hatred. Or just—feeling that they don’t even care. It must be hard.”

“Are you going to be okay?” asks Sylvia softly.

Brian snorts. “I’m always okay.”

Sylvia doesn’t know the details, but Brian used to be mixed up in some bad shit. His power might make him a good bartender, but it also makes him a damn good dealer. He can touch something and know instantly if it’s pure, what it’s made up of, how strong it is, how good of a high it’ll give you. Brian grew up with nothing. Of course he used what he was given. And he helped people. There are kids out there cutting molly with bleach, mixing glass splinters into cocaine, taking risks because they can’t do anything else. Sylvia’s not going to judge—whatever makes people feel like life is worth living. But it got dark for Brian, got down to the core of him. He got out. And now this Liv person wants him to get back in.

“I’ll take you home tonight,” says Sylvia.

Brian laughs, and then looks at her face. “You’re not serious? I live two hours away. Your joints…”

“I’m taking you home,” she says.

She daydreams through their afternoon lectures, doodling in her notebook rather than taking any meaningful lecture notes. Brian is uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the day, preferring to doze in his chair rather than make conversation. The lecturer scowls at them at one point, but Sylvia scowls right back.

Brian lives out in the western suburbs, all the way out past Blacktown. On the train Sylvia ties her hair up, rubs her lipstick off her mouth. Puts her wristband in her bag. She’s met Brian’s sister before—he lives with her and her kids. She’s a nice woman. Tired, but always smiling. She’s subcapable, and cishet, but one of her daughters is a super, and she’s good at listening.

“Ellie’s going to fucking kill me when she hears about the rally,” says Brian, drumming his fingers against his knee. “No, she’s not even going to be mad, she’s just going to be worried. That’s worse.”

Sylvia doesn’t say anything. She loves you. At least she cares. She’s your family. Family can be bad for you. Ellie’s a nice woman. But Sylvia’s only met her twice.

They get off at Brian’s stop, grab a kebab to share between them from the shop next to the train station. It’s dark already. Sylvia always forgets how early it gets dark in winter. It sneaks up on you. There’s a chill in the air, and Sylvia pulls her hoodie up over her ears.

Sylvia isn’t sure exactly when things start to go wrong again. The main street is emptier than usual, but it’s late. One of the streetlights is flickering, casting a ghostly, erratic glow over the street. Brian clutches at her hand and she feels her bones creak.

Brian clocks that they’re being followed before Sylvia does. He starts walking in a different direction to his home, back towards the shops, back towards somewhere well-lit. It doesn’t help. Couple minutes later there are three guys in front of them and one behind, all big guys, all muscle. And they’re all white.

“Brian, right?” says the guy in front. “Heard you’re the bloke to speak to about getting some lab tests done.” He laughs after he says lab tests. His laugh is normal, nice-sounding.

The guy squints a little when he hears Brian’s voice, but then he laughs again. “Sorry, mate. Got your number from Liv. And Jimmy here’s good at finding people.” He nods towards one of his friends, a guy with heterochromic eyes, one purple and one orange. Just fucking great.

Brian drops the act. “I don’t know what Liv told you, but I don’t do that shit anymore. I can’t help you. Sorry.”

He grabs Sylvia’s arm and moves to pull her away from them, but the guy called Jimmy gets in their way, gets all up in their space. “Better hear him out,” Jimmy says.

Brian puffs up like an angry magpie. “I said I don’t fucking do that shit, okay? I don’t need to hear anyone out. I’m fucking leaving.”

He shoves the guy, and Jimmy shoves him back, and Sylvia hits Jimmy with her cane. He yelps, and turns a surprisingly wounded look at her. “The fuck?”

“We’re fucking leaving,” she parrots, heart in her throat.

“You’re not fucking going anywhere,” says the guy in front. He still hasn’t introduced himself. There’s something shining in his hand—a knife? A gun. It’s a fucking gun. Where the fuck did he get a gun. Is it fake? It’s not fake. Shit.

The guy raises up the gun, trains it between Brian’s eyes, and then slowly, purposefully, lowers it to aim at Brian’s leg. “I can shoot you without killing you,” he says. His voice is terribly even, and his eyes are a very clear blue. “Heard you got arrested last night. Troublemaker, you are, hey? Wonder what the cops’ll think if you get admitted to emergency with a gunshot wound. That’s gang stuff, that is. Bet it wouldn’t look good. And then when you get out, well, Jimmy and me’ll still be here, and we’ll still have that job for you to do. I’ll pay you for it. We’re all gentlemen, right? But you don’t get to walk away.”

Brian is breathing hard, fast, like a bird, and Sylvia sees what’s going to happen before he does it. Brian lunges, but Sylvia moves first, and the gun goes off with a ringing bang that makes her ears go numb, and there’s a hot feeling against her hip. Brian is yelping, and pulling her away, and the other guys seem just as shocked as they are. They’re across the street, now, Sylvia propped up in Brian’s arms, splayed over him, and one of the guys says “the cops, Nick, the fucking cops,” frozen, like they don’t know what to do. The blue-eyed guy—Nick—curses, and then they scatter.

Sylvia feels like she’s floating. She feels like she could fly. “I’m fine,” she says, and her voice is very far away. She reaches into her hoodie pocket, and pulls out a little crumpled piece of metal. The bullet. Dented and warped just like the contents of her cutlery drawer.

“Sylvie—you—what…” He’s patting frantically at her hip, her thigh, feeling for blood. There’s nothing. A high laugh bubbles up in her throat, and she slumps to the ground suddenly, all the adrenaline rushing out of her. She presses the broken little bullet into his hand, and he stares at it, uncomprehending, for a long moment.

“You’re… you’re bulletproof,” he breathes, after a long moment. “Sylvia, you’re fucking Wonder Woman!” He laughs then too, a deep belly laugh, and then he whoops, and presses a kiss against her head. “Holy shit, I can’t believe we’re alive. Holy shit, those fucking wankers, they probably pissed themselves when they saw—holy fuck…”

“He was right, though,” she says, with sudden clarity, “the cops, we should go—” There are no sirens yet, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe the cops got called, maybe they didn’t. Gunshots are loud, but it could have been—an illicit firework, or a car backfiring, or something. No one actually got injured. But Sylvia and Brian are Brown While Walking At Night, so there’s no sense in lingering.

Sylvia picks up her cane from where it’s lying beside her, and heaves herself to her feet. Arms around Brian’s shoulders. Brian is weaving around like he’s drunk, still letting out a strangled giggle every now and then, like he can’t quite believe what just happened. Sylvia can’t help but laugh with him.

The stars seem very large above them, even though out here with the city lights you can’t see many of them. The sky is cloudless. Everything seems huge, suddenly, like the whole world’s stretched out in front of them, like they can do anything.

It’s a cold night. The bullet is warm in her pocket. It’s so small in her hand. Such a little thing. They’re both little, her and Brian, little things under a big sky. That’s okay, though, she thinks. Sometimes you need the little things.

END

"I stayed up all night waiting for the election results and then..." is copyright Joanne Rixon 2017.

"The Little Dream" is copyright Robin M. Eames 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprint of “Lessons From a Clockwork Queen” by Megan Arkenberg.

]]>The Little Dream
by Robin M. Eames
She feels the pain before she fully wakes up, stuck in that half-space between slumber and cold daylight. For a ...The Little Dream

by Robin M. Eames

She feels the pain before she fully wakes up, stuck in that half-space between slumber and cold daylight. For a moment she doesn't understand. Pain. A bone-deep ache—no, deeper than her bones. Soul-deep. Her eyes crack open.

Fuck, it's freezing.

Sylvia closes her eyes again, opens them, glares balefully at the open window. She waves a hand, hoping for a little miracle, for everything to fall into place, but the window-frame barely twitches. Might have been telekinesis, might have been her vision blurring from the pain. Her fucking useless powers are all the more fucking useless on bad pain days. She doesn't want to move, because she knows if she moves it'll get worse. She has to get out of bed. The cat needs feeding. For a moment her head is swimming, and she can't remember the cat's name.

[Full transcript after the cut]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 37! This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

We're currently running a little behind again, but should be caught up soon. Our Spring 2017 issue is now out, and that's available at glittership.com/buy for anyone who would like to read all of the stories before they come out on the podcast. Our issues are also available as a patron reward, so if you support GlitterShip via Patreon (patreon.com/keffy), you can check out the issue there.

First, we'll have a poem by Joanne Rixon and a story by Robin M. Eames.

JoanneRixon lives in the Pacific Northwest with her rescue chihuahua. She mostly writes speculative fiction; this is her first published poem. You can follow her on twitter @JoanneRixon.

RobinM. Eames is a 23 year old freelance writer and artist living in Sydney, Australia. They graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, majoring in History and Gender Studies. Their work has been published in Luna Station Quarterly, Glitterwolf, ARNA, Hermes, and in the anthology Broken Worlds edited by Jack Burgos. Robin uses they/them/their pronouns. Their interests include comparative mythology, queer and disability theory & activism, cats, black tea, and tattoos. You can find their twitter at @robinmarceline and their website at robinmeames.org.

I stayed up all night waiting for the election results and then...

by Joanne Rixon

the morning after my skin began to peel.But I haven’t been in the sun, I said.It’s November and also I’m afraid the cancer will return.But still my fingerprints came off whole, skin curledoff my biceps in sheets.It broke at the wrinkles of my elbows, andwhere my skin was thin and dry it flaked: the tips of my hipbones,my collarbones, stretching.

My hair also fell out but that had been happeningfor weeks so it wasn’t surprising. Only the speed of it.Giant handfuls of hair clogged the drain.My scalp turned blotchy as a piebald horse,paler than new cheese, and then began to split.As more layers unloosened, detached—they got damp and rubbery the deeper they went—underneath something began to be visible:

gray-brown and nubbled surface;antler-hard to the touch, and I couldn’t stoptouching. It itched.My sister looked at me sideways, poking my shoulderto see for herself.Don’t be afraid, I told her. I’]]>

GlitterShipYesNoEpisode #36: “How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” by Rose Lemberghttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-36-how-to-remember-to-forget-to-remember-the-old-war-by-rose-lemberg/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-36-how-to-remember-to-forget-to-remember-the-old-war-by-rose-lemberg/#commentsThu, 13 Apr 2017 07:28:24 -0400GlitterShipUncategorizedhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-36-how-to-remember-to-forget-to-remember-the-old-war-by-rose-lemberg/Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story for you. Today we have a return of Rose Lemberg, whose story “Stalemate” was published in episode 7. This is the last story for the Winter 2017 issue, and Spring 2017 is right around the corner! We also have a guest reader, Rose Fox, for this episode.

Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. Rose’s work has appeared in Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Their Birdverse novelette “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and longlisted for the Hugo Award and the Tiptree Award. Rose’s debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016 [...]

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story for you. Today we have a return of Rose Lemberg, whose story "Stalemate" was published in episode 7. This is the last story for the Winter 2017 issue, and Spring 2017 is right around the corner! We also have a guest reader, Rose Fox, for this episode.

Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. Rose's work has appeared in Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Their Birdverse novelette "Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds" has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and longlisted for the Hugo Award and the Tiptree Award. Rose's debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016). Rose can be found on Twitter as @roselemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/roselemberg, and on http://roselemberg.net.

Rose Fox is a senior reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and the co-editor (with Daniel José Older) of Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. They also write Story Hospital, a compassionate, practical weekly advice column about writing, and run occasional workshops for blocked and struggling writers. In their copious free time, they write fanfic and queer romance novels. They live in Brooklyn with two partners, three cats, the world's most adorable baby, and a great many books.

How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War

by Rose Lemberg

At the budget committee meeting this morning, the pen in my hand turns into the remote control of a subsonic detonator. It is familiar—heavy, smooth, the metal warm to the touch. The pain of recognition cruises through my fingers and up my arm, engorges my veins with unbearable sweetness. The detonator is gunmetal gray. My finger twitches, poised on the button.

I shake my head, and it is gone. Only it is still here, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it, unnamed acidic bitterness. Around the conference table, the faces of faculty and staff darken in my vision. I see them—aging hippies polished by their long academic careers into a reluctant kind of respectability; accountants neat in bargain-bin clothes for office professionals; the dean, overdressed but defiant in his suit and dark blue tie with a class pin. They’ve traveled, I am sure, and some had protested on the streets back in the day and thought themselves radicals, but there’s none here who would not recoil in horror if I confessed my visions.

I do not twitch. I want to run away from the uncomplicated, slightly puffy expressions of those people who'd never faced the battlefield, never felt the ground shake, never screamed tumbling facedown into the dirt. But I have more self-control than to flee. When it comes my time to report, I am steady. I concentrate on the numbers. The numbers have never betrayed me.

At five PM sharp I am out of the office. The airy old space is supposed to delight, with its tall cased windows and the afternoon sun streaming through the redwoods, but there’s nothing here I want to see. I walk briskly to the Downtown Berkeley BART station, and catch a train to the city. The train rattles underground, all stale air and musty seats. The people studiously look aside, giving each other the safety of not-noticing, bubbles of imaginary emptiness in the crowd. The mild heat of bodies and the artificially illuminated darkness of the tunnel take the edge off.

When I disembark at Montgomery, the sky is already beginning to darken, the edges of pink and orange drawn in by the night. I could have gotten off at Embarcadero, but every time I decide against it—the walk down Market Street towards the ocean gives me a formality of approach which I crave without understanding why. My good gray jacket protects against the chill coming up from the water. The people on the street—the executives and the baristas, the shoppers and the bankers—all stare past me with unseeing eyes.

They shipped us here, I remember. Damaged goods, just like other states shipped their mentally ill to Berkeley on Greyhound buses: a one-way ticket to nowhere, to a place that is said to be restful and warm in the shadow of the buildings, under the bridges, camouflaged from this life by smells of pot and piss. I am luckier than most. Numbers come easy to me, and I look grave and presentable in my heavy jackets that are not armor. Their long sleeves hide the self-inflicted scars.

I remember little. Slivers. But I still bind my chest and use the pronoun they, and I wear a tight metal bracelet on my left arm. It makes me feel secure, if not safe. It’s only a ploy, this bracelet I have found, a fool’s game at hope. The band is base metal, but without any markings, lights, or familiar pinpricks of the signal. Nothing flows. No way for Tedtemár to call, if ever Tedtemár could come here.

Northern California is where they ship the damaged ones, yes, even interstellars.

Nights are hard. I go out to the back yard, barren from my attempts at do-it-yourself landscaping. Only the redwood tree remains, and at the very edge, a stray rose bush that blooms each spring in spite of my efforts. I smoke because I need it, to invoke and hold at bay the only full memory left to me: the battlefield, earth ravished by heaving and metal, the screech and whoosh of detonations overhead. In front of me I see the short, broad figure of my commanding officer. Tedtemár turns around. In dreams their visor is lifted, and I see their face laughing with the sounds of explosions around us. Tedtemár's arms are weapons, white and broad and spewing fire. I cannot hear anything for the wailing, but in dreams, Tedtemár's lips form my name as the ground heaves.

I have broken every wall in my house, put my fist through the thinness of them as if they're nothing. I could have lived closer to work, but in this El Cerrito neighborhood nobody asks any questions, and the backyard is mine to ravage. I break the walls, then half-heartedly repair them over weekends only to break them again. At work I am composed and civil and do not break anything, though it is a struggle. The beautiful old plaster of the office walls goes gritty gray like barracks, and the overhead lights turn into alarms. Under the table I interlace my fingers into bird's wings, my unit's recognition sign, as my eyes focus resolutely on spreadsheets. At home I repair the useless walls and apply popcorn texture, then paint the whole thing bog gray in a shade I mix myself. It is too ugly even for my mood, even though I’ve been told that gray is all the rage with interior designers these days.

I put my fist through the first wall before the paint dries.

Today, there is music on Embarcadero. People in black and colorful clothing whirl around, some skillfully, some with a good-natured clumsiness. Others are there simply to watch. It’s some kind of a celebration, but I have nothing to celebrate and nothing to hope for, except for the music to shriek like a siren. I buy a plate of deep-fried cheese balls and swallow them, taste buds disbelieving the input, eyes disbelieving the revelry even though I know the names of the emotions expressed here. Joy. Pleasure. Anticipation. At the edge of the piers, men cast small nets for crabs to sell to sushi bars, and in the nearby restaurants diners sip wine and shiver surreptitiously with the chill. I went out to dates with women and men and with genderfluid folks, but they have all avoided me after a single meeting. They are afraid to say it to my face, but I can see. Too gloomy. Too intense. Too quiet. Won't smile or laugh.

There is a person I notice among the revelers. I see them from the back—stooped, aloof. Like me. I don’t know what makes me single them out of the crowd, the shape of the shoulders perhaps. The stranger does not dance, does not move; just stands there. I begin to approach, then veer abruptly away. No sense in bothering a stranger with—with what exactly? Memories?

I cannot remember anything useful.

I wish they'd done a clean job, taken all my memories away so I could start fresh. I wish they'd taken nothing, left my head to rot. I wish they'd shot me. Wish I'd shoot myself, and have no idea why I don't, what compels me to continue in the conference rooms and in the overly pleasant office and in my now fashionably gray house. Joy or pleasure are words I cannot visualize. But I do want—something. Something.

Wanting itself at least was not taken from me, and numbers still keep me safe. Lucky bastard.

I see the stranger again at night, standing in the corner of my backyard where the redwood used to be. The person has no face, just an empty black oval filled with explosives. Their white artificial arms form an alphabet of deafening fire around my head.

The next day I see them in the shape of the trees outside my office window, feel their movement in the bubbling of Strawberry Creek when I take an unusual lunch walk. I want, I want, I want, I want. The wanting is a gray bog beast that swallows me awake into the world devoid of noise. The suffocating safe coziness of my present environment rattles me, the planes and angles of the day too soft for comfort. I press the metal of my bracelet, but it is not enough. I cut my arms with a knife and hide the scars old and new under sleeves. I break the walls again and repaint them with leftover bog gray, which I dilute with an even uglier army green.

Over and over again I take the BART to Embarcadero, but the person I seek is not there, not there when it’s nearly empty and when it’s full of stalls for the arts and crafts fair. The person I seek might never have existed, an interplay of shadows over plastered walls. A co-worker calls to introduce me to someone; I cut her off, sick of myself and my well-wishers, always taunting me in my mind. In an hour I repent and reconsider, and later spend an evening of coffee and music with someone kind who speaks fast and does not seem to mind my gloom. Under the table, my fingers lace into bird’s wings.

I remember next to nothing, but I know this: I do not want to go back to the old war. I just want—want—

I see the person again at Montgomery, in a long corridor leading from the train to the surface. I recognize the stooped shoulders and run forward, but the cry falls dead on my lips.

It is not Tedtemár. Their face, downturned and worn, betrays no shiver of laughter. They smell unwashed and stale and their arms do not end in metal. The person does not move or react, like the others perhaps-of-ours I’ve seen here over the years, and their lips move, saying nothing. I remember the date from the other day, cheery in the face of my silence. But I know I have nothing to lose. So I cough and I ask.

They say nothing.

I turn away to leave, when out of the corner of my eyes I see their fingers interlock to form the wings of a bird.

Imprudent and invasive for this world, I lay my hand on their shoulder and lead them back underground. I buy them a BART ticket, watch over them as even the resolutely anonymous riders edge away from the smell. I take them to my home in El Cerrito, where broken walls need repair, and where a chipped cup of tea is made to the soundtrack of sirens heard only in my head. The person holds the cup between clenched fists and sips, eyes closed. I cannot dissuade them when they stand in the corner to sleep, silent and unmoving like an empty battle suit.

At night I dream of Tedtemár crying. Rockets fall out of their eyes to splash against my hands and burst there into seeds. I do not understand. I wake to the stranger huddled to sleep in a corner. Stray moonrays whiten their arms to metal.

In the morning I beg my guest to take sustenance, or a bath, but they do not react. I leave them there for work, where the light again makes mockery of everything. Around my wrist the fake bracelet comes to life, blinking, blinking, blinking in a code I cannot decipher, calling to me in a voice that could not quite be Tedtemár’s. It is only a trick of the light.

At home I am again improper. The stranger does not protest or recoil when I peel their dirty clothes away, lead them into the bath. They are listless, moving their limbs along with my motions. The sudsy water covers everything—that which I could safely look at and that which I shouldn’t have seen. I will not switch the pronouns. When names and memories go, these bits of language, translated inadequately into the local vernacular, remain to us. They are slivers, always jagged slivers of us, where lives we lived used to be.

I remember Tedtemár’s hands, dragging me away. The wail of a falling rocket. Their arms around my torso, pressing me back into myself.

I wash my guest’s back. They have a mark above their left shoulder, as if from a once-embedded device. I do not recognize it as my unit’s custom, or as anything.

I wanted so much—I wanted—but all that wanting will not bring the memories back, will not return my life. I do not want it to return, that life that always stings and smarts and smolders at the edge of my consciousness, not enough to hold on to, more than enough to hurt—but there’s an emptiness in me where people have been once, even the ones I don’t remember. Was this stranger a friend? Their arms feel stiff to my touch. For all their fingers interlaced into wings at Montgomery station, since then I had only seen them hold their hands in fists.

Perhaps I’d only imagined the wings.

I wail on my way to work, silent with mouth pressed closed so nobody will notice. In the office I wail, open-mouthed and silent, against the moving shades of redwoods in the window.

For once I don’t want takeaway or minute-meals. I brew strong black tea, and cook stewed red lentils over rice in a newly purchased pot. I repair the broken walls and watch Tedtemár-who-is-not-quite-Tedtemár as they lean against the doorway, eyes vacant. I take them to sleep in my bed, then perch on the very edge of it, wary and waiting. At night they cry out once, their voice undulating with the sirens in my mind. Hope awakens in me with that sound, but then my guest falls silent again.

An older neighbor comes by in the morning and chats at my guest, not caring that they do not answer—like the date whose name I have forgotten. I don’t know if I’d recognize Tedtemár if I met them here. My guest could be anyone, from my unit or another, or a veteran of an entirely different war shipped to Northern California by people I can’t know, because they always ship us here, from everywhere, and do not tell us why.

Work’s lost all taste and color, what of it there ever was. Even numbers feel numb and bland under my tongue. I make mistakes in my spreadsheets and am reprimanded.

At night I perch again in bed beside my guest. I hope for a scream, for anything; fall asleep in the silent darkness, crouched uncomfortably with one leg dangling off to the floor.

I wake up with their fist against my arm. Rigid fingers press and withdraw to the frequency of an old alarm code that hovers on the edge of my remembrance. In darkness I can feel their eyes on me, but am afraid to speak, afraid to move. In less than a minute, when the pressing motion ceases and I no longer feel their gaze, I cannot tell if this has been a dream.

I have taken two vacation days at work. I need the rest, but dread returning home, dread it in all the different ways from before. I have not broken a wall since I brought my guest home.

Once back, I do not find them in any of their usual spots. I think to look out of the kitchen window at last. I see my stranger, Tedtemár, or the person who could be Tedtemár—someone unknown to me, from a different unit, a different culture, a different war. My commanding officer. They are in the back yard, on their knees. There’s a basket by their side, brought perhaps by the neighbor.

For many long minutes I watch them plant crocuses into the ravaged earth of my yard. They are digging with their fists. Their arms, tight and rigid as always, seem to caress this ground into which we’ve been discarded, cast aside when we became too damaged to be needed in the old war. Explosives streak past my eyelids and sink, swallowed by the clumps of the soil around their fists.

I do not know this person. I do not know myself.

This moment is all I can have.

I open the kitchen door, my fingers unwieldy, and step out to join Tedtemár.

END

“How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War" was originally published in Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction issue in June 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on April 18th with a GlitterShip original and our Spring 2017 issue!

]]>Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story for ...Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story for you. Today we have a return of Rose Lemberg, whose story "Stalemate" was published in episode 7. This is the last story for the Winter 2017 issue, and Spring 2017 is right around the corner! We also have a guest reader, Rose Fox, for this episode.

Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. Rose's work has appeared in Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Their Birdverse novelette "Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds" has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and longlisted for the Hugo Award and the Tiptree Award. Rose's debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016). Rose can be found on Twitter as @roselemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/roselemberg, and on http://roselemberg.net.

Rose Fox is a senior reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and the co-editor (with Daniel José Older) of Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. They also write Story Hospital, a compassionate, practical weekly advice column about writing, and run occasional workshops for blocked and struggling writers. In their copious free time, they write fanfic and queer romance novels. They live in Brooklyn with two partners, three cats, the world's most adorable baby, and a great many books.

How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War

by Rose Lemberg

At the budget committee meeting this morning, the pen in my hand turns into the remote control of a subsonic detonator. It is familiar—heavy, smooth, the metal warm to the touch. The pain of recognition cruises through my fingers and up my arm, engorges my veins with unbearable sweetness. The detonator is gunmetal gray. My finger twitches, poised on the button.

I shake my head, and it is gone. Only it is still here, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it, unnamed acidic bitterness. Around the conference table, the faces of faculty and staff darken in my vision. I see them—aging hippies polished by their long academic careers into a reluctant kind of respectability; accountants neat in bargain-bin clothes for office professionals; the dean, overdressed but defiant in his suit and dark blue tie with a class pin. They’ve traveled, I am sure, and some had protested on the streets back in the day and thought themselves radicals, but there’s none here who would not recoil in horror if I confessed my visions.

I do not twitch. I want to run away from the uncomplicated, slightly puffy expressions of those people who'd never faced the battlefield, never felt the ground shake, never screamed tumbling facedown into the dirt. But I have more self-control than to flee. When it comes my time to report, I am steady. I concentrate on the numbers. The numbers have never betrayed me.

At five PM sharp I am out of the office. The airy old space is supposed to delight, with its tall cased windows and the afternoon sun streaming through the redwoods, but there’s nothing here I want to see. I walk briskly to the Downtown Berkeley BART station, and catch a train to the city. The train rattles underground, all stale air and musty seats. The people studiously look aside, giving each other the safety of not-noticing, bubbles of imaginary emptiness in the crowd. The mild heat of bodies and the artificially illuminated darkness of the tunnel take the edge off.

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Full transcript after the cut.

[...]]]>Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 35 for March 22, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: “Cooking with Closed Mouths" by Kerry Truong.

Kerry Truong writes about many things, including folktale and horror. Their hobbies are futilely trying to train their dogs; tearing their hair out while reading comics; and eating good food. They like their meat rare, and if a story doesn’t mention food at least once, it wasn’t written by them. You can follow their queer firebreathing on Twitter @springbamboos.

We also have a guest reader!

R Chang hails from a small valley on the West coast, where they moonlight as an artist. Their dearest wish in life is to quit their day job and establish a farm for dogs.

Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Today was no different. After mediating between Mrs. Chang and angry customers, Ha Neul was finally left in peace, a bag of banchan the only payment for their troubles. They stood at the bus stop in a crowd of other commuters, careful to remain at the edges where they could go unnoticed but still hear the conversations around them. There was chatter about everything from peace in Viet Nam to some boxing championship or another. Ha Neul didn’t understand the voracious interest humans showed in things that would only fade from memory or repeat themselves in a matter of years. Still, they liked listening. There was something comforting about the way humans kept going, as full of energy as if they were the first to experience these things.

When the bus arrived, Ha Neul boarded in a stream of other passengers, shouldering their way through until they could find a place to stand. Proximity filled their nose with the tang of everyone around them and made their stomach clench. They ignored it, used to the hunger. Instead of thinking about it, they studied the people closest to them.

An older woman stood next to them in the aisle, her eyes drifting closed as if the lurch and stop of the bus were a lullaby. A pair of students on their other side consulted each other in urgent voices about what songs to put on a mixtape for a crush. Ha Neul listened with amusement. It must be nice, they thought, to be caught up in the rhythm of falling in and out of love; to hope over and over that warmth could be found in the clasp of another person’s hand.

At home, Hana was waiting for them, her homework fanned out on the kitchen table. Their one-bedroom apartment was too small for a proper desk, and neither of them had much use for the kitchen’s traditional function, so Hana had claimed it as her study room. The table was often strewn with books and papers and half-chewed pens. Ha Neul had given up on putting the mess into any kind of order. No matter how hard they tried, the table would be cluttered again within the day.

Hana waved when they came in. “Took you long enough to get home! Did Mrs. Chang give you food again?”

Ha Neul nodded, searching for an empty spot to set the bag down. After a moment they gave up and simply handed it to Hana.

“All mine, and none for oppa,” she sang.

Ha Neul sat down next to her as she searched through the bag, their body heavy from exhaustion. They relaxed in the warmth of the kitchen, watching as Hana tasted each banchan in turn. She was eager to try them all, which was why Ha Neul always accepted Mrs. Chang’s leftovers. It didn’t matter if the food couldn’t make her full. It reminded her of home, of a life where she’d had family and people to belong to.

Ha Neul’s stomach clenched again. They went to the refrigerator and opened it. It was nearly empty, except for the large plastic bag dominating the center shelf and several plastic cartons arranged in neat rows beside it. Ha Neul brought the bag to the table.

“Oppa, don’t you dare get blood on my homework,” Hana said as they stacked books and papers to clear a space on the table.

“I would never sully the homework of a top student.”

Ha Neul took a package wrapped in butcher paper out of the bag and set it on the table. The paper was damp in spots, its white color stained pink by the blood that seeped through it. The tang that Ha Neul had smelled on the bus filled their nose again, this time richer and deeper. Hana stopped eating to watch, her eyes intent. She could smell the blood, too.

They unwrapped the paper to reveal hearts, kidneys, slices of liver, and other organ meats, raw and glistening. Ha Neul ate a heart, ripping the muscle with their sharp teeth. It was savory, satisfying them in a way Mrs. Chang’s food never could, making them crave for more. They reached for a piece of liver as soon as they’d finished the heart. It was good to be home.

Hana was still watching them. They thought they could see the hint of a fang beginning to protrude in the corner of her mouth, but when they offered her a kidney she waved it away. “I’m not into solid food.”

Ha Neul raised an eyebrow, looking at the banchan.

“That’s different. I eat that for fun, not to get full.”

“Can you really taste it?”

“A little. It’s really faint though, like when you have a cold and can only get an aftertaste.”

Ha Neul didn’t understand, having never had a cold. They nodded anyway. “Do you remember what human food tastes like?”

Hana looked wistful. “I think I’m forgetting. I know that hotteok are sweet and kimchi jjigae is spicy, but even though I know the words I don’t remember the taste.”

She must be nearing forty, but time hadn’t changed the smoothness of her skin or the roundness of her face. If there was one thing that aged her, it was her eyes. They were too knowing. It was only now, with her longing so apparent, that she seemed exactly the high school student that she pretended to be.

Ha Neul had known that longing. It had been food that first drew them to humans, after all. So many colors and textures: thick, greasy noodles coated in black bean sauce, kimbap dotted with yellow, green, and orange vegetables, cream-colored crab meat marinated in soy sauce. They supposed it was harder for Hana, though, having actually known what human food tasted like. Reaching over, they squeezed her hand.

Hana squeezed their hand back and smiled at them. “How’s your food, oppa?”

“Delicious.”

“It’s still weird to me how you eat cows and not humans. Isn’t it unsatisfying?”

“It’s a good enough substitute.” When reduced to their innards, humans and cows weren’t very different, Ha Neul thought, and offal was easy to get from the butcher for no more than a few cents.

Hana trailed a finger through the blood that had congealed on the paper, then licked it off. “You know you’re welcome to come find dinner with me any night.”

The food soured in Ha Neul’s mouth. Being hungry around humans was one thing, eating them was another. Thinking about it made them feel ill.

“I don’t eat humans anymore,” they said, allowing their voice to get sharp.

Hana bit her lip, looking chastised. Ha Neul felt guilty, but they’d told her often enough that they didn’t want to be goaded about their eating habits. They’d tried living as a human long ago, hoping to discover the taste of other food. But a gumiho is a fox at heart, its human appearance a mere illusion, and Ha Neul’s hunger had only grown with each dish they’d eaten. It was all ash. In the end, they’d given into their hunger, only to be horrified by the uniform redness. They’d stopped eating humans by the time they met Hana. She should have known better than to tease them about it.

Ha Neul worried that she would sulk, but instead she rummaged through her backpack and brought out a flyer.

“Here,” she said, sliding it across to Ha Neul. Her voice was light, the previous subject waved away. “Talking about food reminded me of this. I don’t think I can wiggle my way out of it.”

Ha Neul chewed on a piece of liver and read the flyer. It was printed on daffodil yellow paper, the words on it thick, black, and followed by multiple exclamation points. Cartoonish pictures of rice bowls and tacos surrounded the text.

“A cultural diversity lunch? What exactly are the students supposed to learn from that?”

“How to appreciate other people’s cultures, I guess. Mr. Hanson says we should start learning about diversity in high school.”

“I understand that, but why food?”

“Because people like food, obviously. We’re all supposed to bring in one dish from our culture.”

“What do you want to bring in?” They stared at the pictures of rice bowls. Did her teacher expect her to bring in rice? Even Ha Neul knew that plain rice didn’t make a meal.

Hana answered without hesitation. “Kimchi fried rice.”

They couldn’t help laughing at her confidence. “And where in the world are we going to get that?”

Hana smiled. She was prettiest like that, which was exactly why she smiled widest if she needed a favor. “I was going to ask if Mrs. Chang could make it.”

Ha Neul’s answer was as ready as hers had been. “Mrs. Chang is busy and has no money to make kimchi fried rice for free.”

“She doesn’t even have to make that much. There are only twenty students in my class.”

“Isn’t that still a lot?”

Hana pouted. “Please, oppa? I don’t want to be embarrassed. What if everyone else brings something fancy and I don’t have anything?”

There was that longing again, not as obscured by the pout as she thought it was. Ha Neul didn’t understand. Food was food, so what did it matter if she brought banchan or kimchi fried rice? But they could see how happy this simple thing would make her, and that mattered. She was their sister by choice, the only person who wanted to share the partial life they led.

She threw her arms around Ha Neul, startling them. After a beat, they remembered to lift their own arms and hug her back. They held her close, taking comfort in the gesture that was at once strange and warm.

Many years ago, on a warm spring night in Korea, Ha Neul had heard a cry of despair. If they had ignored that cry, they might still be living in Korea, trying to find a way to fit into the jumbled new pattern that the war had created. But they had listened, and that was how they’d found Hana, blood on her shirt and two bite marks on her neck. They couldn’t abandon her to that despair. Instead, they had held their hand out and said come, there is still a way to live.

So the two of them had lived, as best as they could, side by side for more than twenty years. When they had decided to go to America, it made the most sense to claim that they were siblings. They’d argued about who should be the elder. Ha Neul had won her over by pointing out that if they were her older brother, they could support her while she went to school.

The papers had been made, and the two of them had moved to Los Angeles to join the number of Korean immigrants building a new life along Olympic Boulevard. While Hana finished her last year in high school and dreamed about college admissions, Ha Neul waited tables and lifted boxes, letting Mrs. Chang speak to them as if they were a child.

It didn’t matter to them whether Mrs. Chang’s food was good or not. They couldn’t taste any of it, after all. They were content seeing the variety of colors in her kitchen. She, in turn, was grateful for someone who stayed in spite of her temper and the customers’ insults. Ha Neul hoped that her gratefulness would soften her to their request. They made sure to be of extra help in the restaurant the day after Hana showed them the flyer, lifting heavy pots off the stove and chatting with customers until the bad food was forgotten.

The restaurant was never busy, and once the lunch hour had passed it was empty. Mrs. Chang used the time to eat her own late lunch. Ha Neul joined her, choking down the rice and drinking cup after cup of tea. They waited until most of the food was gone before saying, “Mrs. Chang, can I ask you a favor?”

Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps she thought they would ask for money. Still, her voice was not unkind when she answered. “What is it?”

“My sister’s teacher asked her to bring in a dish from her culture for a class project. I was wondering if you could make the food.”

“What kind of food?”

“Kimchi fried rice.”

Mrs. Chang sighed and shook her head. “I don’t think I have the time for that, Ha Neul.”

It was the answer they’d expected, but they were still disappointed. “It’s not too difficult to make, is it? I’ll even work extra hours in the restaurant in exchange for it.”

“After a whole day of cooking, do you think I’d have the energy to make more food for a bunch of children? I have my own family to take care of once I’m done here.” She stood up and stacked the empty dishes to take back into the kitchen.

“Mrs. Chang, please.”

“I already said no!”

Ha Neul stood up as she started walking back to the kitchen. “Then at least teach me how to make it.”

She turned around. “What was that?”

Food is food, Ha Neul thought, and food was only ash in their mouth. But they’d promised Hana that they would help her. “Teach me how to cook, Mrs. Chang. If I learn, then I can help you in the kitchen, too.”

She studied them for a moment. They wondered if they looked desperate, if it was that or the promise of help that made her say, “All right then. But I don’t want to hear any complaints because it’s too hard, understand?”

“Oh, perfectly,” Ha Neul said, and followed her into the kitchen, already questioning the wisdom of learning how to cook without taste.

Hana’s luncheon was in a week, and in that week Ha Neul dedicated themself to learning how to cook. The radio in the kitchen played Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder songs as Mrs. Chang showed Ha Neul how to make galbi and gamjatang, kimbap and gyeranjjim.

Although she wasn’t an unkind teacher, she was also not gentle. Ha Neul disliked the way she grabbed their hand to show them how to chop vegetables, or how she would take the ladle from them to taste soup. They learned quickly, however, and their dishes soon looked the same as Mrs. Chang’s. They began to take their own pleasure with food, relishing in the clean crack that split an egg and the feel of rice grains slipping through their fingers. Taste was lost to them, but they could still see, and hear, and feel.

The first dish they brought out to customers, however, fared no better than any of Mrs. Chang’s.

“Do you call this samgyetang?” asked a middle-aged woman with tightly permed hair.

Ha Neul had known she would be trouble the moment she’d walked in. Something about her pinched mouth had foreshadowed grief. Putting on a practiced smile, they said, “I’m sorry if the soup isn’t good. Should I bring you something else?”

“Nothing you brought is any good. The banchan isn’t even seasoned well!”

Ha Neul bit their tongue, even though their hands ached from chopping meat and mixing seasoning. Before they could regain the patience to smile, however, the woman sighed. “Forget it. I’m sorry. It’s just been a long time since I had a good meal, and I thought I’d find it here.”

Ha Neul studied how deep the wrinkles on her face ran, how calloused her hands were. They wondered how long she had been in America, and what kind of dishes she had the energy to make after a long day of work. Did she have family to care for? When was the last time she’d eaten something someone else made for her?

The woman got her wallet and began counting out bills. Before she could set them on the table, Ha Neul said, “I’m sorry, but could you tell me how you’d like the food to be seasoned?”

Later, Mrs. Chang told them that they had too little pride. “You listen too much to other people’s complaining.”

Ha Neul just laughed, and she looked at them as she often did, like something strange and half unwanted. Still, they kept listening to the complaints. They memorized how much sesame oil to add and how long meat should stay in the pan. They noted the exact shade of orange that carrots turned when they were tender but not limp, and the translucence of onions that would be just sweet enough. The complaints lessened and more customers began to come to the restaurant, brought in by word of mouth.

Mrs. Chang talked of giving Ha Neul a raise. They heard the hesitance in her voice and declined. It was enough to spend time in the kitchen while Mrs. Chang served the customers, her temper improved by their praises. Soon, Ha Neul became the kitchen’s only occupant. They preferred it that way, with only the radio to keep them company. This much of human food they had mastered, and they were content to stay in the confines of the kitchen for a long time, basking in its vivid colors.

The day before Hana’s potluck, Ha Neul stopped by a supermarket on the way home. They returned to the apartment laden with plastic bags. The kitchen table was as messy as ever, but there was no sign of Hana. No doubt she was out getting food. They cleared the kitchen table, making room for the ingredients they’d bought from the supermarket.

The stove, which had been untouched since they moved in, flared to life without protest. They made rice, and while the water bubbled and spit, they sliced kimchi and diced Spam. They didn’t like Spam. Its sickly pink color reminded them of red watered down, and it slid out of the can with a slither that made them shudder. But it was cheap and Hana liked it, so they tipped the diced ham into the pan without looking at it. Steam filled the air. Ha Neul made more than enough kimchi fried rice for Hana’s classmates, then set aside a little extra for her when she came back.

It was dark when Hana returned home. She was wearing a green polka dot dress, her hair in a ponytail. There was blood on her. Ha Neul could smell it as soon as she walked through the door, and their stomach clenched.

“I’m in the kitchen,” they called out to her.

She walked in, the scent of blood following her. It pervaded the kitchen, making Ha Neul forget, for a moment, the food on the stove. Their stomach growled and their mouth ran dry. They hadn’t eaten all day.

“Oppa, you’re cooking!” Hana said, coming up next to them.

They focused on the rice in the pan, stirring it to mix the kimchi and Spam evenly. The Spam had darkened to a deep pink. “Of course I am. Unless I’m mistaken, your potluck is tomorrow.”

“You look like a professional chef.”

They smiled in spite of the smell of blood in their nose. “Your compliment is appreciated. Now go wash your hands. I made some for you to eat tonight.”

Hana clapped her hands and ran to do as they said. By the time she came back, the scent of blood had eased, and Ha Neul could hand her the bowl of kimchi fried rice without their hand trembling.

“How is it?” they asked as she began to eat.

She closed her eyes and chewed. Ha Neul knew she could barely taste it, but there was happiness on her face. “It’s delicious, oppa. I know it is.”

They couldn’t smell the blood anymore. Ha Neul felt the warmth of the kitchen again, the steam in the air. They watched Hana eat, a little longing mixed with their pleasure in her enjoyment. The two of them would have made a proper family if only Ha Neul could sit down and eat with her. But if Hana was content with only the hint of flavor, then they were content with only this, its reflection.

They turned back to the stove, and shut it off.

On the morning of Hana’s potluck, Ha Neul carried a tin foil tray of kimchi fried rice to her bus stop, handing it to her carefully before running to catch their own bus. A disheveled man with a hoarse voice harangued passengers about sinning as the bus crawled its way down Wilshire, and the couple in front of Ha Neul argued in whispers, almost hissing as each accused the other of infidelity. Ha Neul listened with half an ear, looking out the window at the Ford Pintos inching past and the dusty haze that made everything outside glow.

The restaurant was dark and cool, not yet overheated by the stoves. Ha Neul put the chairs in place and wiped the tabletops while Mrs. Chang chatted with her sister, who had joined them for the day. The sister had arrived in America only the week before, and Mrs. Chang was eager to have someone who knew the same people she did and shared the same hopes for this new life.

Ha Neul didn’t interrupt their conversation, dreaming instead about the food they would make that day: the chill of the soy sauce on their skin, the true red of gochujang dark against the silver of the spoon, the steam beading their face in sweat whenever they lifted the lid off a pot.

No customers complained that day, and Mrs. Chang sent Ha Neul home with more galbi and banchan than usual. Ha Neul had made the food, but they chose to feel kindly towards Mrs. Chang for her generosity.

At home, Hana was waiting for them. The tin foil tray sat next to her on the table, still burdened with its food. It was bent slightly out of shape. Bits of rice flecked the tabletop around it. Hana’s mouth was pursed tightly, but it quivered when Ha Neul asked her, “What’s wrong?”

“They said it smelled bad and made fun of me for eating Spam. What do they know? I could eat them instead!”

Ha Neul knew she would have cried, if she could. They sat down next to her, some vice grip squeezing their chest. For Hana’s sake, they smiled. “I’d advise against it. They probably don’t taste good.”

“They’re ungrateful punks. You worked so hard to make this and they wouldn’t even eat it.”

“I am hardly insulted by the bad taste of children a fraction my age.”

Hana wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a habit she still hadn’t unlearned. Whenever she was angry or upset, her hand went to her eyes as if there were still tears to stem. Ha Neul took her hand and squeezed it.

Her skin was dry and smooth, eroded by neither time nor care. In that respect, she was different from her classmates and everyone else around her. It was hard to remember that difference, however, when she was squeezing Ha Neul’s hand so tightly, looking for comfort after a hurt that should have been slight.

After a moment she said, “I wanted to eat this fried rice.”

Ha Neul squeezed her hand again. “You can eat all of it now, if you want.”

“No, I wanted to really eat it. I wanted it to taste like kimchi fried rice should, to make me full.” Hana stomped to the drawers and came back with a plastic spoon. “Even though those little ingrates can eat, they won’t make use of it.” She dug into the rice hard enough to bend the flimsy plastic and began eating.

Another layer of sadness settled over Ha Neul, heavy and thick as the smog that pervaded Los Angeles. They should have listened to their own advice from the beginning: food was food. How could it teach people anything? Perhaps for Hana’s classmates, the kimchi fried rice was not a sign of comfort and family, but of something else entirely. Perhaps some of their fox’s nature made its way into the dish, marking it as something fearful.

“I’m sorry.” They felt useless with only those words for comfort.

“It’s not your fault, oppa.”

The two of them sat in silence as Hana ate. Ha Neul knew she could finish the whole tray. It wouldn’t make her full, after all. They sat and watched her, trying to imagine what it tasted like and only remembering the crunch of the kimchi under their knife, the splash of red over white rice, the Spam glistening pinkly before they’d thrown it in the pan. Things which were only parts of the whole, not enough to fill the quiet of this kitchen.

Ha Neul wanted, as they hadn’t in years, to take a spoonful of food and taste it. But they knew, even before they finished the thought, that it would be nothing but ash. All they could do was say, “I’ll make you as much food as you want.”

Hana smiled, and though the corners of her mouth lifted, her expression didn’t brighten. She looked her age. “Even if I’ll never be able to tell how good it is?”

“Of course.”

They thought about the colors of different ingredients, the textures under their hands. No matter what other people thought, they didn’t want to forget any of that. As long as Hana wanted food they would cook, and the two of them would keep trying, again and again, to discover taste in the warmth of this kitchen.

END

“Cooking with Closed Mouths” is copyright Kerry Truong, 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprint of "How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” by Rose Lemberg.

]]>Cooking with Closed Mouths
by Kerry Truong
A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a ...Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 35 for March 22, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: “Cooking with Closed Mouths" by Kerry Truong.

Kerry Truong writes about many things, including folktale and horror. Their hobbies are futilely trying to train their dogs; tearing their hair out while reading comics; and eating good food. They like their meat rare, and if a story doesn’t mention food at least once, it wasn’t written by them. You can follow their queer firebreathing on Twitter @springbamboos.

We also have a guest reader!

R Chang hails from a small valley on the West coast, where they moonlight as an artist. Their dearest wish in life is to quit their day job and establish a farm for dogs.

Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Today was no different. After mediating between Mrs. Chang and angry customers, Ha Neul was finally left in peace, a bag of banchan the only payment for their troubles. They stood at the bus stop in a crowd of other commuters, careful to remain at the edges where they could go unnoticed but still hear the conversations around them. There was chatter about everything from peace in Viet Nam to some boxing championship or another. Ha Neul didn’t understand the voracious interest humans showed in things that would only fade from memory or repeat themselves in a matter of years. Still, they liked listening. There was something comforting about the way humans kept going, as full of energy as if they were the first to experience these things.

When the bus arrived, Ha Neul boarded in a stream of other passengers, shouldering their way through until they could find a place to stand. Proximity filled their nose with the tang of everyone around them and made their stomach clench. They ignored it, used to the hunger. Instead of thinking about it, they stu]]>

GlitterShipYesNo00:28:16Episode #34: “for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her” by Agatha Tanhttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-34-for-she-is-the-stars-and-the-sun-revolves-around-her-by-agatha-tan/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-34-for-she-is-the-stars-and-the-sun-revolves-around-her-by-agatha-tan/#commentsThu, 02 Mar 2017 23:28:01 -0400GlitterShipsupervillainshttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-34-for-she-is-the-stars-and-the-sun-revolves-around-her-by-agatha-tan/for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you [...]

]]>for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

[Full transcript after the cut.]

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 34 for February 28, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story for today is "for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her" by Agatha Tan.

Agatha Tan is a first year student at Yale-NUS College. She writes fantasy and sci-fi fiction and occasionally also pens poetry. In her spare time, she dabbles in fanfiction, modular origami, and video games.

for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

Thinking of work dampens your mood quickly. At the rate things are going, when the end of the year rolls around, you’ll have achieved maybe half an item on the to-do list you created in January. All because of a girl who waltzes in at the most inappropriate times and wrecks all your work.

(You consider cancelling bring-your-kid-to-work day because she’s always exploiting the relatively more relaxed security, but family is important, even in this business, and you don’t want your employees to forget that.)

Your eyes roam from your carefully drawn out plans—you’re designing a new machine to replace the one that someone blew up last week—to the girl in the corner, and you decide that, you know what, screw this. You neatly fold up the blueprints and shove them into your bag; carrying your tea in one hand and your jacket in the other, you make your way over to her.

“Hi,” you greet, and you hate that you’re one of the most powerful women in one of the most powerful industries, and your voice still quivers around cute girls. You flash her a smile, and you’re relieved when she flashes you one in return. Granted, her answering smile is nervous and hesitant, but it’s a smile nonetheless. “Do you mind…?”

The girl is perky and a little too enthusiastic and she seems to radiate rainbows, which really isn’t your usual type. But hey, she’s cute. “No! I mean, um, no, I don’t mind.”

As you set your tea down and slide into the seat, you introduce yourself to her. Your introduction is much smoother than hers, which tumbles out of her mouth and trips over her lips. You barely catch her name—Elle. For all the grace she exudes when she walks, she’s a pretty clumsy person. Still, that only endears you more to her, and you find yourself laughing at a stupid joke—her attempt at breaking the ice— even though you’ve heard it before and yeah, it’s just as stupid as you remembered. You talk for a little, and you suspect she’s into you too because you think her pupils are slightly dilated and she keeps leaning in. (Then she’ll catch herself and sit upright again. Rinse and repeat.)

She offers up information about herself to match the information you give her. When you tell her you work in engineering—given your talents, it didn’t make sense for you to go into anything else—she gushes about how cool that is and how smart you must be before telling you that she’s a chef. You mention tennis, and she reveals she dances on the side, confirming your suspicions. Not that you’re ever wrong, of course, but the validation is welcome.

It’s going well—you haven’t screwed up, and neither has she, and you’re beginning to think you might have a chance with her when your phone rings. You don’t want to take it, but glancing at the screen, you realize it’s your second-in-command, Tommy, so you excuse yourself and go outside.

“Boss, there’s something wrong with the machine,” he says immediately, once you’ve picked up. He’s learned remarkably swiftly that if you pick up at all, you know who it is, and he shouldn’t waste your time. Your last second-in-command took weeks to learn that lesson, and he’s still paying the price for that in Reykjavik, Iceland. “It’s making this odd purring sound and shaking like it might blow.”

You have to ask him to clarify thrice which machine he means, because god knows you didn’t hire him for his communication skills, but when you finally get it, you sigh because it’s not something you know how to fix without looking at it yourself. “Fine, I’ll come in,” you say, rubbing your temple with a finger that’s gone numb already. Electricity crackles at your fingertips, streaks of white and blue. “Expect me in half an hour.”

Not waiting for a reply, you hang up and head back inside. Elle has her nose buried in the book she was reading before you approached her earlier, and your arrival startles her, but she smiles. You grin back because she’s so jumpy it’s adorable. Not to mention normal. You could use some normal. Her smile falls when you tell her it was work and you have to go, but her face lights up again when you ask for her number. She keys it into your phone and you want give her yours as well, but she tells you her phone is out of battery. Shrugging, you scrawl your number in felt pen on a napkin—you feel like a cliché, but hey, your life is probably one giant cliché—and watch the lights in her eyes dance as she takes it, accepting your promises of soon.

It’s not going to last long, you know, because these flings never do. Sooner or later, your job will get in the way; you’ll have a screaming match at one in the morning and she’ll throw you out with your stuff because we never see each other anymore and it’s like you’re not even trying when I am, I am, but she won’t hear you and so you’ll go. You’ll feel drained for weeks afterwards, yet jump in again with the first cute girl who grabs your attention.

Still, it’s fun while it lasts, and you find yourself looking forward to seeing her again even as you trudge through the bitter snow to get to the train station. You might be one of the richest women in the country, but that’s only because you’re gifted and smart as hell, and this really isn’t the weather for driving.

Three months later, things have still not gone to hell.

You’re surprised, because usually it only takes one, but you suppose that your job hasn’t been as demanding recently. Your company is exceptionally quiet because your team’s deadline to perfect that next big machine hasn’t passed, so there’s a lull in the excitement. And the lull is good, because not only does it give your employees a chance to get some of the more legitimate work done, but it also means that no one is spying on you because you’re not actually stirring up any trouble. It’s pretty relaxing.

A bonus is that you’ve gotten to spend more time with Elle. Currently, she’s curled up on your couch, playing with Jam, watching a television special on the exploits of the supervillain Black Thunder and how her rival, the superhero Summer Wind, has foiled her every time. This special focuses on the time the superhero blew up Black Thunder’s entire lab three months ago. There are other villains and heroes, but those two are the top of the food chain. You watch these specials a lot, because how else will you keep up with the community?

It turns out that the weird purring sounds the machine had been making? Yeah, a cat, which had somehow gotten into the compound and into the machinery. You took it home with you because you couldn’t have left it in the compound to get stuck in all the other machines, and the next day you found it with a paw in your jam jar, hence the name. Jam took an immediate liking to Elle when she first came over two weeks ago, which is more than you can say for yourself. The cat spent an entire week hissing and clawing at you and the scars on your arms are faint but they’re still there to prove it.

You’re in the kitchen scooping globs of ice-cream on top of strawberries and Nutella when Elle calls over. “Hey, Van? Can I take you out next Wednesday? I know it’s your birthday.”

The words startle you, which is saying something because you’re nearly never startled. Not even when the skylight shatters and glass rains down on the warehouse floor just as you’re going to perform the start sequence, which is mostly unexpected and very, very annoying. The tall girl behind the mask whose life seemed to revolve around spoiling your machines has never been known for her subtlety.

But Elle, it seems, has never ceased to surprise you from the time you met her. She’s full of delicious contradictions—she moves with grace but speaks with inelegance, smart as a button but dense as osmium. She’s a chef at one of the top restaurants in the city, yet she loves McDonald’s takeout and canned soup. She loves beautiful things—art and music, sometimes literature—but she also loves you.

She’s said it only once, when you were cuddling in bed and she thought you were asleep. But you also see it in the things she does, and the words she says: the way she holds on just a little too long when you hug (you aren’t complaining; she’s warm and soft and smells like peaches), the way the corners of her eyes crinkle when you see each other (she also smiles with her lips, but those smiles are easier to fake), and the way she’s all over you when you come back with a bandaged hand after getting burned at work while working on finding a material suitable for the power core of a newer machine (how are you such a klutz you’re usually so careful). You say it back while she examines the wound because you mean it, you really do. Elle has become an anchor who grounds you even while you’re off plotting plans on the scale of world domination, and she’s busy enough herself that she understands when you’ve got a project you can’t tear yourself away from and cancel dinner plans. In fact, she’s usually busy when you are. It’s like the universe has extended an olive branch, and you don’t hesitate to take it.

Elle is too good for you, yet you hang on like she’s your lifeline.

In the confines of your apartment and the coffee shop and the space between Elle’s hands and yours when they’re interlocked, you both draft the blueprints of a small universe that’s just for the two of you. In here, nothing else exists. You’re not one of the most brilliant minds of the century and lightning doesn’t dance on your fingers unless you need to fix something insignificant like the stove or the phone, and she’s not a chef in a top restaurant. Your universe comprises pizza from the deli down the street and Chinese takeout that delivers in fifteen minutes, tops (you know the owner well and he doesn’t dare displease you). For the first time in years, your universe doesn’t include a sun that’s about to burst and take everything with it. This universe makes you feel safe and warm and normal and you love it.

Elle tells you she loves it too. In addition to you.

You hadn’t expected her to remember your birthday. You’d only mentioned it once, in passing, but it seems it’s a detail Elle has locked into her mind. “I’ve got to work on Wednesday,” you answer, wiping melted ice-cream off the counter because you’ve apparently been lost in thought for that long. You notice the kettle’s stopped working again, and you really should get a new one, but for now you give it a light zap from your finger and it promptly fixes itself. It’ll last at least another week; you’re still working on long-term fixes. “But I’m free for dinner, if you want?”

Elle agrees. You bring the dessert into the living room—lifting it out of Jam’s jumping range so he doesn’t get his paws into it—and she greets you with a kiss.

Her lips are sweeter than any strawberry could ever be.

You ask her to move in right after you pull away for air, and she agrees. Your universe gains a hundred new stars.

It’s Wednesday. As the machine powers up, you discuss these developments with Tommy.

He listens attentively, and when you finish telling him about how Jam got into some of her boxes and ripped up a tank top, he simply asks, “Does she know you’re an international supervillain?”

You sigh, glum. Jam is struggling in your arms, so you stroke his fur; you bring him in to work sometimes because you actually like the sodding cat. “I haven’t figured out how to tell her.”

“Well, you’d better figure out soon,” he says, and you know he’s right, but all you do is tell him to suit up and supervise the rookies because they’ve got a world to take over today and your girlfriend troubles aren’t going to get in the way of that.

You put Jam down so you can don your suit. Your hand finds electric currents in the air and you drag the pieces of your suit off the table and onto you. They click into place and start to hum with power, and when you’re satisfied that everything’s where it should be, you pull the visor of your helmet down, shielding your face and transforming into the villain everyone knows as Black Thunder.

The control room is entirely yours to work with. Well, yours and your cat’s. Your employees are on the ground floor, manning various power outlets and backup generators in case something happens. You get on your hover board and float around. You check the settings, and, satisfied, you’re about to hit the button that will make toast of Australia (this one Australian guy snubbed you once, and you’d never really forgotten it, so that’s where you’ll start), when lo and behold, the skylight comes crashing in and Summer Wind, her brown hair up in a ponytail and her face covered by a flimsy-looking mask (you know better—it’s actually a very sturdy but thin material she stole from your labs), comes flying in like she does every single time.

You don’t know how she does it. It’s not even a bring-your-kid-to-work day this time, but she still managed to sniff out your plot. This girl is infuriating.

“I really need to get that skylight covered with brick, or something,” you lament, throwing up your arm. Your voice comes out in a neutral robotic tone, courtesy of a small device inside your helmet. You weren’t a top-rated engineer or master villain for nothing. A metallic shield expands from your arm to protect you and Jam from the raining glass. “Can’t you let me toast Australia just once?”

“No can do, cutie,” Summer Wind says, and her voice is a robotic tone too, because she also stole one of those devices from your labs. She sounds way perkier than you do, though. Sometimes you wonder who the real criminal is, because she steals your stuff pretty much whenever she foils one of your plots. Unless, of course, she’s blown everything up, and you really hope she won’t this time because this machine was three months’ work.

She shoots down towards you. Your uttermost concern is, remarkably, to protect the cat, which has apparently no self-preservation instincts at all. It’s staying where it is and meowing like it expects to be petted. “Hey, don’t hurt the cat,” you chide, gliding over to it and scooping it up before Summer Wind reaches the ground. It’s not your usual behaviour, but living with Elle might have softened you. “Give me a sec.”

You can’t see her face because of the mask, but Summer Wind pulls out of her dive before she can injure Jam, which is all you need. You’re about to glide over to the corner of the room where you put the cat carrier when she exclaims, “Jam?”

You freeze in your tracks. How would she know—and then it all clicks. Why your girlfriend always seems busy when you are, why there are days you both come back with scrapes and bruises and lousy cover stories. Why she doesn’t always smell like food when she comes home from work.

Elle has more than one job.

It seems to hit both of you at the same time. Summer Wind—Elle—is the first to take off her mask. “Vanessa?”

Her eyes are wide and vulnerable and she’s so open—there are so many ways you could use this opportunity to finally win. The button is right there. You could easily have Australia toasted in five seconds. You reach for the button—but no. You want to win, but not like this. You slip your helmet off, and look everywhere but at her. Because you’re not looking, you don’t see the punch coming. You guess you probably deserve it.

As her fist makes impact with your cheek, you swear you hear the universe—your universe, the one you planned from scratch and built with Elle—laughing, and the sun bursts into a supernova that blinds you and leaves a hollow ringing in your ears.

END

"for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her" was originally published in the Hwa Chong Institution literary magazine in 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on March 14 with a GlitterShip Original: "Cooking with Closed Mouths" by Kerry Truong.

[Music plays out]

]]>for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her
by Agatha Tan
You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other ...for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

[Full transcript after the cut.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 34 for February 28, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story for today is "for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her" by Agatha Tan.

Agatha Tan is a first year student at Yale-NUS College. She writes fantasy and sci-fi fiction and occasionally also pens poetry. In her spare time, she dabbles in fanfiction, modular origami, and video games.

for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

Thinking of work dampens your mood quickly. At the rate things are going, when the end of the year rolls around, you’ll have achieved maybe half an item on the to-do list you created in January. All because of a girl who waltzes in at the most inappropriate times and wrecks all your work.

(You consider cancelling bring-your-kid-to-work day because she’s always exploiting the relatively more relaxed security, but family is important, even in this business, and you don’t want your employees to forget that.)

Your eyes roam from your carefully drawn out plans—you’re designing a new machine to replace the one that someone blew up last week—to the girl in the corner, and you decide that, you know what, screw this. You neatly fold up the blueprints and shove them into your bag; carrying your tea in one hand and your jacket in the other, you make your way over to her.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It’s a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

“I have no clue,” Jalzy says. “But… I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens.”

CURIOSITY FRUIT MACHINE and THE SLOW ONES are both GlitterShip Originals.

[Full transcript after the cut]

—-more—-

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 33 for February 14, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

We have two stories this week, “Curiosity Fruit Machine [...]

]]>Curiosity Fruit Machine

by S. Qiouyi Lu

"What is it?" Alliq says.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

CURIOSITY FRUIT MACHINE and THE SLOW ONES are both GlitterShip Originals.

[Full transcript after the cut]

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 33 for February 14, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

We have two stories this week, "Curiosity Fruit Machine" by S. Qiouyi Lu and "The Slow Ones" by JY Yang. Even better, S. narrated both stories for us!

S. Qiouyi Lu is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator; their stories have appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction, and their poetry has appeared in Liminality and Uncanny. They are a 2016 graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop and a dread member of the Queer Asian SFFH Illuminati. Find them online at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter at @sqiouyilu.

JY Yang is a queer, non-binary writer and editor who has short fiction published or forthcoming in places like Uncanny, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. Their debut novellas, THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE and THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN, will be out from Tor.com Publishing in Fall 2017. They live in Singapore, edit fiction at Epigram Books, and swan about Twitter as @halleluyang.

Curiosity Fruit Machine

by S. Qiouyi Lu

"What is it?" Alliq says.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

Alliq frowns. "Don't. For all we know, that thing could be some sort of weapon. We should probably wait for the others to catch up so we can get the engineering team to take a proper look."

Alliq's voice fades into a mumble. Jalzy presses eir nose to the glass front of the object and brushes a tight curl of hair out of eir face. Ey can just barely make out some lettering—PAY. Eir grasp of 21st-century English is weak, but this seems to be a money machine of some sort. Surely, ey thinks, bringing eir arm down, a money machine can't hurt em...

"Don't—!"

The object whirs to life, three wheels inside the glass case spinning; a few of the bulbs lining the edge buzz and spark. Jalzy jumps back. Oh crap. Ccccccclackkkclackkclackkk—didn't old-timey explosives make that sound? Or were explosives more of a tick-tock sound? One of the wheels clicks as it stops—Jalzy grabs Alliq by the wrist, drags xem to a safe spot behind a wall of heavy crates—then another click—they brace themselves—and—click!

Alliq flinches. Jalzy waits a moment—a dud, perhaps?—before peeking past the edge of the crates. The object's face shows one symbol, then two of the same symbol. The first is an oblong, yellow shape, and the next two are round, red orbs connected by an inverted green V.

"Goddammit, don't do this to me," Alliq hisses. Xe's sweating a little, xyr forehead shining, and Jalzy has to suppress a giggle.

"Hey, we're fine, right?" Ey steps out from behind the crates and goes back to the object. Ey crouches down. There's a metal trough underneath the symbols, but it's empty. Do they need to put something in there?

"Jalzy," Alliq says from over eir shoulder, "those are—those are pictures of fruit."

"What's a fruit?"

"Seriously?" Alliq says, voice laden with exasperation. When Jalzy gives xem a blank stare, Alliq points at the oblong symbol and says, "Look, the first one is a lemon. Those two on the right, those are cherries."

Jalzy squints. "I thought 'cherry' and 'lemon' were just colors. You know, like how we also have orange nutriblocks in our sustenance packs."

Alliq snorts. "You know there used to be a fruit called 'orange', right? It wasn't just a color. Those are actually flavors. They came from these."

Jalzy straightens up and paces around the object. "So what is this, a fruit-making machine?"

"Did you never take terrabiology?" Alliq says. "History of Earth? Anything?"

"Look, I took astrophysics so I wouldn't have to deal with so much reading, okay," Jalzy says, flipping eir crown of curls over eir shoulder. "So just educate me already, O All-Knowing Alliq."

Alliq crosses xyr arms over xyr chest in a huff. "Fruit comes from seeds, not machines. I mean, we perfected the science to duplicate the flavors all the way back in the 21st century, but we never really got down how to duplicate the organic material. So the best we've got now is our nutriblocks." Xe unfolds xyr arms and circles around the object. "This—this is something else entirely. I don't think it actually has anything to do with food."

"So, if it doesn't seem to be a weapon, and it doesn't produce anything... wanna pull the lever again and see what happens?" Jalzy grins slyly at Alliq, who raises xyr hands in surrender.

"I'm going to check out the other room. If I were you, I'd just keep doing inventory until engineering gets here and can confirm what kind of object that is."

Jalzy sticks out eir tongue.

"Good thing you're not me," ey says.

And ey pulls the lever again.

END

The Slow Ones

by JY Yang

"The grass is dying."

Kira looked up from squeezing a sachet of turkey-flavored sludge into the cat's bowl. Thom was standing by the living room window in his bathrobe still, holding a chipped mug of coffee and gazing out.

"What?" she asked.

"The grass. In the garden. It's gone all brown."

She dumped the sachet in the trash and almost rinsed her sticky fingers under the kitchen faucet. But she remembered in time, and instead wiped them on the dishtowel she'd hung up.

She hurried into the living room.

"There," Thom said, "see?"

In the small rectangle of dirt they called a garden the sparse tufts of grass had shriveled and turned colorless like the hair on an old man's head. A flap of crisp packet gleamed in the far corner, silver-underside-up, chicken bones scattered around it. The neighborhood kids. Kira wondered how long they had been there. Maybe forever. Everything seemed stuck in stasis these days.

The grass had been in decline for a long time, months before the invasion began. Once upon a time Kira had plans for that patch. She had imagined cultivating flowers: Tulips, daffodils, rosebushes. Climbing ivies for the trellis. Maybe even one of those outdoor water features. But there hadn't been any time, had there?

"Hasn't rained in weeks," Thom said. "Might never rain again."

Kira exhaled and stormed back to the kitchen. The clock said five to three and she wished it didn't. She took a box of porkloin out of the freezer and popped it into the fridge.

"Might as well dig it all up," Thom said from the living room.

"Yeah, why don't you do it?" she said, louder than she'd intended.

The cat had cleaned out her bowl and now stood staring at Kira, tail stiff in expectation. Kira snatched the water dish off the floor, then gingerly ran a centimeter of water into it. "Don't waste it," she told the cat as she sat it down again.

In the living room Thom had settled into the armchair, knees apart, eyes blank. "What would be the point?"

"What?"

He turned to look at her, framed in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, and shrugged. "There's no point."

"Whatever," she said, and went to put her boots on.

The cat had followed her out of the kitchen. "Come here, girl," she heard Thom say, his voice soft and charming, like it always used to be.

Kira shoved her feet into the narrow confines of her boots. "I've left pork chops in the fridge to defrost," she said. "If you have time, you could make dinner." She knew he wouldn't.

The cat settled on the windowsill to watch her as she stepped outside and locked the front door.

Kira pulled her coat around herself, and then, because she had to, like pulling a plaster off, to get it over with; because she couldn't just ignore it, she looked up at the sky.

From horizon to horizon, the sky above their street was filled with aliens. A thick layer of massive silver bodies, like cumulus rolls made of mercury, slid by over the tops of the streetlamps, the roofs, the twisted fingers of bare trees. Sunlight sometimes leaked through their bulk, but not often; the world had been in a state of weak thunderstorm dusk for weeks.

The president of the United States had called them the Slow Ones, and the name stuck. Their enormous smooth bodies slipped against one another in a never-ending parade. There were scales and faint markings on each one whose purpose was impossible to discern. Concentric discs in alternating light and dark colors, larger across than a commercial jetliner, were assumed by observers to be eyes. But the gaping maw in front of each one, leading into unfathomable darkness: That one everyone could agree on. It was a mouth. A permanently open mouth.

They were sucking up all the water vapor in the atmosphere. That was what the scientists on the proper news channels—BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera—were all saying. But even the so-called experts knew so little about what was going on that people were no worse off reading crackpot theories on the Internet. Those had sprung up like mushrooms in the wake of rain, or perhaps, in the absence of it. They offered up all kinds of explanations as to what was happening: Act of God, benign migration, hostile invasion, collective hallucination.

The first few days after the Slow Ones arrived, pouring into the sky above Alaska like reflective pancake batter until they blanketed the Earth, Thom had spent hours scrolling through theory after theory after theory, the most promising of which he served up to Kira over dinner, or texted to her while he was at work.

That was when he still had work.

The Slow Ones were aliens. This was something almost everyone—the scientist, the conspiracy theorist, the person on the street—agreed on. They were not of this world.

The prevailing theory was that these were migratory creatures and they would leave for unknown pastures in good time. And then sunlight and blue skies and rain would return to the world. Wind and weather and water evaporation, all those good things.

It was unlikely a theory as anything, but it allowed people to hold on to hope.

Kira put her hood up and hurried down the street. If she walked fast enough, she might catch the three-fifteen bus to the city center.

She missed the bus.

When Kira finally arrived at the city center, the air under the Slow Ones was still. Not a wing stirred in it, not a guttural call rang out. Gulls were a year-round phenomenon in Norwich, sailing from spire to spire and filling public spaces with their noises regardless of the season. But their numbers in the market square had been dwindling since the Slow Ones arrived, and today was the day, it seemed, they passed the point of no return.

Kira noted this with an odd trill in her belly. She, like everyone else, had grown numb to the clipped tones of a Dr. Somebody explaining to a presenter, in clinical terms, how the disruption to the Earth's water cycle was killing all the fish in the ocean. But it was another thing entirely to watch all the seabirds vanish before her eyes, relegated to an unknown fate.

She hurried through the semi-sparse mid-afternoon crowd. When Thom's agency had moved him here a few years ago, she had been struck by how many retirees she saw on the streets. It felt like a different kind of fabric had been sewn in place compared to London which she had just gotten used to, and Kuala Lumpur where she had grown up. It was a good move for them, Thom being promoted to Norfolk branch manager, but Kira had wondered about all the people here, aging in place. It put in her mind an image of people sinking to the bottom of a lake, like sediment.

Of course, at that time tourism was still a booming industry, and Thom had glowing images in his sights, futures full of holiday cottages and ski trips to the Alps. Neither of them knew what lay on the horizon: the shrinkings and the layoffs and the final collapse that awaited them. The arrival of the Slow Ones had only been a final straw.

As she walked past the market square Charles, who ran one of the fruit stalls, waved at her. "All right?" he asked.

An impulse seized her then, a screaming impulse, one which wanted to ask him how could he be so calm, couldn't he see what was happening? She wanted to grab him and shake him, point him to the sky and the shuttered fish stall next to him and the sad twisted things that were left of his wares, she wanted to do that and ask, Can't you see? Can't you see? She wanted to run at all the white-haired folk shuffling down the street getting on with their business as usual and shout it at them, shout it into their hairy wrinkled ears.

She smiled at Charles. "Yeah, I'm alright."

By the time she had gone down all the little streets that led her to the Pushcart she was half an hour late for work. As she came through the eatery's glass-paneled wooden door she caught a glimpse of Melanie's splendid silhouette at the till and her heart did that weird flutter it always did when Melanie was around. She shoved that sensation deep inside herself, where it belonged, and put on her shop-girl smile.

In the afternoons the Pushcart sold tea and scones and crepes with bacon and maple syrup. Come evenings and the menu switched to alcohol and deep-fried things served in small silver buckets. Today the sign said no tea, they were under rations, bottled drinks only please. The warm brown interior of the cafe held a handful of lethargic patrons in various states of apathy, chewing fitfully or reading the news. Some of them were watching the TV nailed to the far wall, framed by old ship ropes and seashells. They usually kept it off unless there was footy going on, but since the Slow Ones came it had been permanently fixed to BBC News. The prevailing graphic, set to an indistinct voiceover, said WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR.

(Nothing. They knew nothing. When governments and scientists sent drones and instruments up to the Slow Ones they stopped working, some kind of electromagnetic interference, they said. NASA was stumped. Everybody was stumped, grasping at straws.)

Melanie didn't turn around as Kira stashed her things under the counter. That was an anomaly: For the past six months Kira's work routine had always begun with her warm and buttery smile. She studied her coworker's broad back, hunched over the till, noting the crooked way the apron was fastened around her waist. "You alright?"

Melanie straightened up with a speed that suggested she hadn't heard Kira come in. "Hey. How's it going?"

She looked tired, a collection of messy lines and dark smudges, as though the weekend had worn her face thin somehow. "You alright?" she repeated.

"Yeah, I suppose. The sky hasn't fallen in, has it?" She gave Kira a laugh, and it was the kind that spoke less of mirth than it did of defeat. "How's life at home?"

"Ha. Funny you should ask." Melanie sucked in a breath. "She's gone back to Sheffield."

"What, you mean—"

"Yeah. Permanently. She spent the weekend packing." Melanie was staring at her knuckles, which she kept lightly punching against the counter.

"I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Can't quite say, really. Just th— I don't know. She'd been planning it for a while, I think. She got back with her ex without telling me." She looked at Kira suddenly, eyes bright and shining. "Might as well, eh? End of the world and all that."

"I mean, I—" She wanted to say, I always thought you two had the perfect relationship. "You two seemed so happy."

"We did, didn't we?" She laughed again, and one corner of her mouth quirked upwards. In the slant of those lips Kira suddenly saw the cracking of facade and glimpsed familiar shores: the simmering irritations, the long silent nights, the cold stretches of not-arguments that thawed slowly into not-forgiveness.

"Come help me with this till," Melanie said. "Something's wrong."

They fought with the till. It was an old-fashioned one, just buttons and a drawer that popped out. It was jammed. They figured out the problem—a coin had gotten stuck, down the side of the drawer, and they fished it out with a flat screwdriver.

"There you are, you little bastard," Melanie said, shaking the coin like a misbehaving puppy. She put it on top of the till, a tiny victory.

At six a man barged into the Pushcart and slammed into the counter as Kira was ringing up an old lady's tea. "Turn your TV on," he rasped.

"It's on," Kira said, pointing. The President of the United States, looking like he had aged ten years in as many days, was speaking inaudibly. In one corner a red block declared “LIVE.”

The man was youngish, clean-shaven, dressed in clothes that were well looked-after. "Turn it up. Turn it up."

Kira looked around, but she had no idea where Melanie was. The woman by the TV stepped up and reached for the volume dial. The voice of the US president, clipped and nasal, rose up and filled the room.

"... THAT I AUTHORIZE THE USE OF THERMONUCLEAR WEAPONS AGAINST THE PHENOMENON KNOWN AS THE SLOW ONES..."

Titters of conversation filled the room. What could that mean? Kira felt like the ground under her was vanishing, but she couldn't tell if it was her or the planet that was evaporating.

The US president said: The missiles would be released over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, far from any centers of civilization.

The US president said: America could no longer wait for world powers to deliberate on a unified course of action.

The US president said: America must take steps necessary to safeguard our future.

A young man near the front of house was telling his girlfriend, in loud tones, how the radiation was going to get seeded in the atmosphere and kill them all. He was a physicist, he knew. The hawks running America, drunk on their Hollywood apocalypse dreams, were going to destroy life on the planet as we knew it.

"It's war, you know," the old lady at the till said to Kira. "The Russians aren't going to like it. They're going to do something, you'll see." She declared it matter-of-factly, with utter conviction, and Kira saw the young girl she had been, bent over the radio, listening for news from the frontlines.

On impulse she said, "It's on the house," and closed the till. "Go on, everything's free today."

The man who had run in said, "Could I get—"

"No, no, we're closing." Kira walked out from behind the counter, her legs shaky but still functional, and went to the glass-paneled door. The US president was still talking. She refused to look at the sky as she flipped the “OPEN” sign over. "I'm sorry. Please, everyone, could you just leave. We're closed. Everything's on the house."

The scattered handfuls looked at her and each other, uncertain.

"Go home," Kira said. "Call your mother, hug your children. Go home."

She watched them file out onto the dark streets. When it was just her in the Pushcart she abandoned the unwashed, undressed tables and turned the lights out. Craig, the owner, only came in on Thursdays and weekends. She'd sort it out later.

She found Melanie behind the storeroom door, chest still slowly heaving in the wake of a long fit of crying. She stood up, looking embarrassed, as Kira came in. "Sorry. I—still a bit of a mess—did something happen?"

Kira ghosted towards her, fixed on her red-rimmed eyes, her lips. "The world's going to end."

"What?"

"The Americans are going to nuke the Slow Ones. They're doing it tomorrow."

Melanie exhaled. "Madness."

Madness, chaos, centers not holding. Just what was she clinging on to, anyway?

Kira reached up and kissed her.

Melanie's body reacted with surprise at first, then hunger. She had strong arms that could lift a double carton of coffee beans over her head, and they trembled around Kira's waist. As Kira sublimed into liquid Melanie closed the door behind them, so that nobody would hear.

Later, as they sat together on the floor, sticky skin to sticky skin, Melanie asked, "Why?" No modifiers, no clauses. Just ”why.”

Kira remained quiet for a while, pinching her toes inside the lingering damp heat of her boots. "Thom once told me about a theory he read. You know how they said the Slow Ones might be like migratory birds?"

"I've heard that one. Sounds like tosh. But pretty much everything does these days."

"Well, migratory birds come back every year. So why haven't we seen the Slow Ones before? Why has no-one, out of all of human history, ever mentioned them?"

"So they're not migratory."

Kira could still picture Thom's face as he had grilled her over this theory at the dinner table. How his freckled face had lit up with schoolboy excitement at the prospect of humanity's destruction, something interesting happening at last. "Well, the universe operates on a different scale, doesn't it? Billions and billions. What if the Slow Ones do come back, but so long that they only appear once every geologic age?"

Melanie made a grunting noise. Kira settled her soft hip against Melanie's bony one. "It's the extinction events," she said.

"What are those?"

"Big die-offs." She curled her fingers around one of Melanie's nipples. "Like the dinosaurs. The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. That's the one everyone knows, but it wasn't the only one. The fossil record is full of mass extinctions. Late Devonian, Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic... Once every thirty million years, like clockwork. Scientists don't know why."

Melanie turned her head, her attention caught. "The Slow Ones?"

"The oceans are already all dead. That's how it usually starts."

"So we're going extinct."

"Probably. I don't know. It's just a theory, anyway."

Melanie blew air through wet lips. "It's not like we can get off this planet, is it?"

Kira laid her head against Melanie's shoulder and listened to the sound of her breathing for a while. "You know," she said, "some scientists think extinction events are like planetary do-overs. Evolution speeds up after each extinction event. New forms of life start to flourish."

"Like when you get left for a younger woman."

Kira snorted. Melanie caught the edge of her hand and caressed the tip of her little finger, gently feeling around the shape of knuckle. How small our bones are, Kira thought, how fragile. What if whoever comes after us never finds them? It would be as if we never existed. A blank in the fossil record.

"Are you going to tell Thom?" Melanie asked.

Kira thought of what Thom's reaction might be. The things he would say, and the things he wouldn't. The look on his face, both accusatory and triumphant. She felt tired.

"No," she said finally. "He's got enough on his mind."

She could see him now, in his bathrobe still, standing at the window, watching grass die in their garden as the sky grew darker and darker. In the fridge, untouched, a pair of pork chops slowly defrosted, waiting and waiting and waiting.

END

“Curiosity Fruit Machine” is copyright S. Qiouyi Lu, 2017.

"The Slow Ones" is copyright JY Yang, 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on February 28 with a reprint of “for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her” by Agatha Tan.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

CURIOSITY FRUIT MACHINE and THE SLOW ONES are both GlitterShip Originals.

[Full transcript after the cut]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 33 for February 14, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

We have two stories this week, "Curiosity Fruit Machine" by S. Qiouyi Lu and "The Slow Ones" by JY Yang. Even better, S. narrated both stories for us!

S. Qiouyi Lu is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator; their stories have appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction, and their poetry has appeared in Liminality and Uncanny. They are a 2016 graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop and a dread member of the Queer Asian SFFH Illuminati. Find them online at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter at @sqiouyilu.

JYYang is a queer, non-binary writer and editor who has short fiction published or forthcoming in places like Uncanny, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. Their debut novellas, THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE and THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN, will be out from Tor.com Publishing in Fall 2017. They live in Singapore, edit fiction at Epigram Books, and swan about Twitter as @halleluyang.

Curiosity Fruit Machine

by S. Qiouyi Lu

"What is it?" Alliq says.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

Alliq frowns. "Don't. For all we know, that thing could be some sort of weapon. We should probably wait for the others to catch up so we can get the engineering team to take a proper look."

Alliq's voice fades into a mumble. Jalzy presses eir nose to the glass front of the object and brushes a tight curl of hair out of eir face. Ey can just barely make out some lettering—PAY. Eir grasp of 21st-century English is weak, but this seems to be a money machine of some sort. Surely, ey thinks, bringing eir arm down, a money machine can't hurt em...

"Don't—!"

The object whirs to life, three wheels inside the glass case spinning; a few of the bulbs lining the edge buzz and spark. Jalzy jumps back. Oh crap. Ccccccclackkkclackkclackkk—didn't old-timey explosives make that sound? Or were explosives more of a tick-tock sound? One of the wheels clicks as it stops—Jalzy grabs Alliq by the wrist, drags xem to a safe spot behind a wall of heavy crates—then another click—they brace themselves—and—click!

Alliq flinches. Jalzy waits a moment—a dud, perhaps?—before peeking past the edge of the crates. The object's face shows one symbol, then two of the same symbol. The first is an oblong, yellow shape, and the next two are round, red orbs ]]>

Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib.

Full transcript after the cut.

̵ [...]

]]>The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 32 for January 24, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

For some GlitterShip news: coming on February 1st, we will be open to poetry submissions. For more information, check the submissions guidelines page on our website, GlitterShip.com. Also, starting with our Winter 2017 issue, GlitterShip also has seasonal issues available via our Patreon (patreon.com/keffy) or at glittership.com/buy, for those of you who would like to read the stories before anyone else.

Our story this week is "The Subtler Art" by Cat Rambo.

Cat's fiction has appeared on GlitterShip before. Episode 13 featured her story "Sugar" , way back in September 2015.

Cat lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. 2017 sees the publication of her second novel, Hearts of Tabat.

Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed,and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.

The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib.

It was the Dark’s favorite place to eat, and since she and Tericatus were haphazard cooks at best and capable of (usually accidentally) killing someone at worst, they often ate their meals out. And because the city is so full of notorious people, very few noted that the woman once known as the best assassin on five continents on a world that only held four and her lover, a wizard who’d in his time achieved wonders and miracles and once even a rebirthed God, were slurping noodles only an elbow length’s away at the same chipped beige stone counter.

Though indifferent cooks, both were fond enough of food to argue its nuances in detail, and this day they were arguing over the use of white pepper or golden when eating the silvery little fish that swarm every seventh Spring in Serendib.

“Yellow pepper has a flatness to it,” Dark argued. Since retirement, she had let herself accumulate a little extra fat over her wiry muscles, and a few white strands traced themselves through her midnight hair, but she remained the one of the pair who drew most eyes. Her lover was a lean man, sparse in flesh and hair, gangly, with long capable hands spotted with unnatural colors and burns from alchemical experiments.

“Cooking,” said the person on the other side of her, “is an exceedingly subtle art.”

“Cathay,” the Dark said, recognizing the stranger. Her tone was cool. The newcomer was both acquaintance and former lover for both of them, but more than that, Cathay was a Trickster mage, and you never knew what she might be getting into.

Tericatus grunted his own acknowledgment and greeting, rolling an eye sideways at the Dark in warning. He knew she was prone to impatience and while Tricksters can play with many things, impatience is a favorite point to press on.

But the conversation that the Trickster made was slight, as though Cathay’s mind were elsewhere, and by the time the other had tapped coin to counter in order to pay, most of what she’d said had vanished, except for those few words.

“A subtle art,” the Dark repeated to Tericatus, letting the words linger like pepper on her tongue. “It describes what I do as well. The most subtle art of all, assassination.”

Tericatus slouched back in his chair with a smile on his lips and a challenging quirk to his eyebrow. “A subtle art, but surely not the most subtle. That would be magery, which is subtlety embodied.”

The Dark looked hard at her mate. While she loved him above almost all things, she had been——and remained——very proud of her skill at her profession.

The argument hung in the air between them. They both considered it. So many words could go in defense of either side. But actions speak stronger than words. And so they both stood and slid a token beneath their empty bowls and nodded at each other in total agreement.

“Who first?” the Dark asked.

“I have one in mind already, if you don’t care,” Tericatus murmured.

“Very well.”

Serendib has no center—or at least the legend goes that if anyone ever finds it, the city will fall—but surely wherever its heart is, it must lie close to the gardens of Caran Sul.

Their gates are built of white moon-metal, which grows darker whenever the moon is shadowed, and their grounds are overgrown with shanks of dry green leaves and withered purple blossoms that smell sweet and salty, like the very edges of the sea.

In the center, five towers start to reach to the sky, only to tangle into the form of Castle Knot, where the Angry Daughters, descended from the prophet who once lived there, swarm, and occasionally pull passersby into their skyborne nests, never to be seen again.

Tericatus and the Dark paid their admittance coin to the sleepy attendant at the entrance stile outside the gate and entered through the pathway hacked into the vegetation. Tericatus paused halfway down the tunnel to lean down and pick up a caterpillar from the dusty path, transferring it to the dry leaves on the opposite side.

The Dark kept a wary eye on the sky as they emerged into sunlight. While she did not fear an encounter with a few of the Daughters, a crowd of them would be an entirely different thing. But nothing stirred in the stony coils and twists so far above.

“This reminds me,” she ventured, “of the time we infiltrated the demon city of S’keral pretending to be visiting scholars and wrestled that purple stone free from that idol.”

“Indeed,” Tericatus said, “this is nothing like that.”

“Ah. Perhaps it is more like the time we entered the village of shapeshifters and killed their leaders before anyone had time enough to react.”

“It is not like that either,” Tericatus said, a little irritably.

“Remind me,” she said, “exactly what we are doing here.”

Tericatus stopped and crossed his arms. “I’m demonstrating the subtlety with which magic can work.”

“And how exactly will it work? she inquired.

He unfolded an arm and pointed upward towards the dark shapes flapping their way down from the heights, clacking the brazen, razor-sharp bills on the masks they wore.

“I presume you don’t need me to do anything.”

Tericatus did not deign to answer.

The shapes continued to descend. The Dark could see the brass claws tipping their gloves, each stained with ominous rust.

“You're quite sure you don’t need me?”

A butterfly fluttered across the sky from behind them. Dodging to catch it in her talons, one Daughter collided with another, and the pair tumbled into the path of a third, then a fourth...

The Dark blinked as the long grass around them filled with fallen bodies.

“Very nice,” she said with genuine appreciation. “And the tipping point?”

Tericatus smirked slightly. “The caterpillar. You may have noticed that I moved it from one kind of plant to another -”

“Of course.”

“And when it eats jilla leaves, its scent changes, attracting adults of its species to come lay more eggs there.”

“Well done,” she said. “A valiant try indeed.”

The Home for Dictators is, despite its name, a retirement home, though it is true that it holds plenty of past leaders of all sorts of stripes, and many of them are not particularly benign.

“Why here?” Tericatus said as they came up Fume and Spray and Rant Street, changing elevations as they went till the air grew chill and dry.

“It grates on me to perform a hit without getting paid for it,” the Dark said, a little apologetically. “It feels unprofessional.”

“You’re retired. Why should you worry about feeling unprofessional?”

“You’re retired too. Why should you worry about who’s more subtle?”

“Technically, wizards never retire.”

“Assassins do,” the Dark said. “It’s just that we don’t usually get the chance.”

“Get the chance or lose the itch?”

She shrugged. “A little of both?”

Tericatus expected the Dark to go in through the back in the way she’d been famous for: unseen, unannounced. Or failing that, to disguise herself in one of her many cunning alterations: an elderly inmate to be admitted, a child come to visit a grandparent, a dignitary there to honor some old politician. But instead she marched up the steps and signed her name in bold letters on the guestbook. “The Dark.”

The receptionist/nurse, a young newtling with damp, pallid skin and limpid eyes, spun it around to read the name, which clearly meant little to him. “And you’ve come to see...” he said, letting the sentence trail upward in question as his head tilted.

The Dark eyed him. It was a look Tericatus knew well, a look that started mild and reasonable but which, as time progressed, would swell into menace, darken like clouds gathering on the edge of the horizon. The newt paled, cheeks twitching convulsively as it swallowed.

“Simply announce me to the populace at large,” the Dark said.

Without taking his eyes from her, the newt fumbled for the intercom, a device clearly borrowed from some slightly more but not too advanced dimension, laden with black-iron cogs and the faint green glow of phlogiston. He said hesitantly into the bell-like speaking cup, “The, uh, Dark is here to see, uh, someone.”

The Dark smiled faintly and turned back to the waiting room.

After a few moments, Tericatus said, “Are we expecting someone?”

“Not really,” the Dark replied.

“Some thing?”

“Closer, but not quite,” she said.

They glanced around as a bustle of doctors went through a doorway.

“There we go,” the Dark said. She tugged her lover in their wake.

Up a set of stairs and then they saw the doctors gathered in a room at the head where an elderly woman lay motionless in her bed.

They drifted further along the corridor. Dark paused in a doorway. The man in the wheelchair wore an admiral’s uniform, but his eyes were unseeing, his lips drawn up in a rictus that exposed purple gums.

“Diploberry,” Dark said. “It keeps well, and just a little has the effect one wants. It is a relatively painless means of suicide.”

Tericatus looked at the admiral. “Because he heard you were coming.”

The Dark spread her hands in a helpless shrug, her grin fox sly.

“And you’re getting paid for all of them? How long ago did you plant some of the seeds you’ve harvested here?”

“The longest would be a decade and a half,” she mused.

“How many others have died?”

“Three. All dictators whose former victims were more than willing to see their old oppressors gone.”

Tericatus protested, “You can’t predict that with such finesse.”

“Can I not?” she asked, and pointed at the door where three stretchers were exiting, carried by orderlies in the costume of the place, gold braids and silver sharkskin suits.

She smiled smugly. “Subtle, no?”

Tericatus nodded, frowning.

“Come now,” she said. “Is it that hard to admit defeat?”

“Not so hard, my love,” he said. “But isn’t that Cathay?”

Dark felt another touch of unease. You never know what a Trickster Mage is getting you into. And there indeed stood Cathay at the front desk, speaking sweetly to someone, a bouquet of withered purple blossom in her hand, more of it in her hair, a smell like longing and regret and the endless sea.

Dark murmured, “She always loved those flowers and yet did not like contending with the Daughters.”

Tericatus said, “She had lovers here, I know that. No doubt she has five inheritances coming.”

Cathay turned and smiled at them. The Dark bowed slightly, and Tericatus inclined his head.

#

“But,” the Dark finally said into the silence as they walked away, headed by mutual accord to the bar closest to the noodle shop, “we can still argue over which of us exercises the second most subtle art.”

END

"The Subtler Art" was originally published in Blackguards: tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues edited by J.M. Martin in 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, leaving reviews on iTunes, or just telling a friend.

Thanks for listening, and we'll be back on February 13th with two original stories: "Curiosity Fruit Machine" by S. Qiouyi Lu and "The Slow Ones" by JY Yang.

[Music plays out]

]]>The Subtler Art
by Cat Rambo
Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.
The noodle shop that lies ...The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib.

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 32 for January 24, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

For some GlitterShip news: coming on February 1st, we will be open to poetry submissions. For more information, check the submissions guidelines page on our website, GlitterShip.com. Also, starting with our Winter 2017 issue, GlitterShip also has seasonal issues available via our Patreon (patreon.com/keffy) or at glittership.com/buy, for those of you who would like to read the stories before anyone else.

Our story this week is "The Subtler Art" by Cat Rambo.

Cat's fiction has appeared on GlitterShip before. Episode 13 featured her story "Sugar" , way back in September 2015.

Cat lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. 2017 sees the publication of her second novel, Hearts of Tabat.

Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed,and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.

The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendi]]>

I honestly don’t think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley’s index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley’s finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I’ll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He’d make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Full transcript after the cut.

—-moreR [...]

]]>Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 31 for January 11, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Before I get started, I'd like to let you know about a slight format change for GlitterShip. If you enjoy listening to GlitterShip via podcast or reading the fiction on our website as the stories are released, don't worry! That's not going to change. However, GlitterShip's stories will be released in 4 seasonal issues per year starting this month with Winter 2017. These issues will be available to purchase at the beginning of the season in EPUB, MOBI and PDF format and will include three months' worth of stories. If you like what we do here and would like to support GlitterShip, as well as get an electronic copy of the stories to keep, check out GlitterShip.com/buy.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Parts" by Paul Lorello.

Paul Lorello is a freelance writer from Ronkonkoma, New York. His fiction has appeared in Big Pulp's Kennedy Curse anthology, Black Chaos: Tales of the Zombie, Membrane, The Big Adios, Way Out West, and Pseudopod. In 2014, the Pseudopod podcast of Paul's story, "Growth Spurt", was chosen as the winner of the coveted Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Short Story. Paul lives with three quadrupeds and one biped. He knows very little about everything.

Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Jake had about sixteen more bids on other parts of Bobo Schmuley. He feverishly browsed them, like watching all these little pots of water set to boil. I failed to mention that this was merely his latest acquisition. That more of Bobo Schmuley was gathered up in a stoneware bowl in Jake's room. They listed the items for auction piecemeal. Bit by bit, as it were. Whet the appetites of folks like Jake for as long as they possibly could, issuing little teasers on newstables and crawl signs, a scroll on the side of a community car—as if the community car industry hadn't already sold out—Bobo Schmuley's Uvula Coming Soon! Or something like that. The heads would turn and suddenly there would be this electric buzz in the air. And then would come sounds from the detractors, who blow these little horns that go skeeeeeet, as they shout their little slogans. I was always one with them in spirit, though I always knew enough to keep my gob stopped. Get a few detractors who'd been sniffing Sour Air and mix them up with these fervent Schmuley devotees and you've got yourself a riot, my friend. Add to that a heat index of 123 Fahrenheit and the thing becomes not so much a war as an unbearable nuisance, with a lot of screaming and fainting and throwing up and very little progress in terms of one side triumphing over the other.

I also didn't mention that this was about the time that I started conversing with Jake seriously on the subject. "This will be over sooner rather than later," I said. "Sooner or later," I said, "they'll run out of Bobo Schmuley. Then what will you do?"

He ignored me the first few times I brought it up. Then it started getting to him. He'd rub at his little frozen blue nose and then the teeth and the fists would clench and the eyes would widen and he'd start to tremble all over. I have to admit I found it amusing. He knew it. It made him angrier.

But he kept on. I couldn't understand why. It's not like he'd ever have a complete Bobo Schmuley. No one would. There was only one, and they were going to run out of him soon. Sure, there were counterfeits out there, but they were easy to spot. Easy for Jake, that is, and anyone else who was serious about collecting.

Here's what happened. A day or so later, Jake came in and started rummaging through the kitchen chest freezer, torso deep.

"That's not sanitary," I called to him. He ignored me.

His legs flailed around, flopping sort of, like a fish or that Sloppy Epileptic toy that people were all up in a tizzy about a couple of years ago.

It's technic, stupid hectic,

Mucho apoplectic

Sloppy Epileptic!

Whooooooo?

Sloppy Epileptic!

Batteries not included.

So I got up. "You do realize you're making an unholy irritant of yourself." And that's when I saw he had a screwdriver in his hand and was chipping away at the rime on the inside of the chest. His mouth was open and his teeth were clenched and he was breathing in gusts and tears and there was spit flying onto the fishstick boxes.

And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to understand, because he kept his parts in the sub-cooler and there was going to be Holy Hell on Earth if they spoiled. I looked through the sub-cooler window and saw a thin fog forming in splashes across it. The real problem was that we spent most of our daylight hours in the sub-cooler. To hell with his parts. To hell with Bobo Schmuley. Of course I didn't say this.

Jake stabbed a coil or something because all of a sudden the room was flooded with this hammy smell of leaking coolant gas.

"Now you done it! Now you went and messed up our cooler and messed up our whole apartment with that stink!"

He dropped the screwdriver into the chest and used both of his chunky hands to gather up the shards of ice he'd managed to free, cursing the whole way because the cold was stinging his fingers. He ran into the sub-cooler and I watched him through the window. He stood before the bowl, looking panicked. Then he dropped the ice pieces next to his bowl of parts and then took off his shirt, laid it next to the bowl, and carefully placed his collection of parts onto it. Then he gathered up the ice and dumped it hastily into the bowl and carefully lifted the shirt and put it on top of the ice. This endearing combination look of satisfaction and triumph and relief came over his face, and he wiped his hands on his pants, then looked around as if there was another shirt in there somewhere. Then he came out.

"That was absolutely poetic," I said.

He pointed at the room, his mouth a rictus. He looked through the window, I guess to make sure he was pointing in the right direction, then looked back at me. "The fucking unit."

"I know," I said. "And now take a whiff."

He did so. "What's that?"

"Coolant. And you're coming with me to go buy another chest. And you're gonna go halfsies on it."

"What about the sub-cooler?" he said, defeated.

"I might be able to fix it. But get your shoes on."

And so we went out to the community car stop and there was this argument in process. Two sourheads were screaming at a young woman with a daisy graft on her chin.

Daisychins were, in those days, by and large, crazy about parts, and this one probably made an excited comment about an upcoming release, incurring the wrath of the sourheads.

Jake took her side, and I had to take his. And now it was three against two. Two sourheads, that is, which is like arguing with four regular people, each of whom speak a different language.

They said that Bobo Schmuley probably wasn't a real guy anyway. And they said that Bobo Schmuley's best parts were all taken and all that was left were grubs and inferior arteries and so forth. And anyway, they said, get a life. And besides, they said, agents of the everclear are everywhere. Their go-to slogan.

I agreed with them silently.

One of the sourheads lunged forth to bite Jake's face. I swatted at him. Probably not the best idea, as now we'd drawn a crowd. And as luck would have it, a community car rolled by and scrolled another message about Coming soon! Bobo Schmuley's Liver! Bid or Be Smashed! And someone shouted that there was absolutely no way there was a liver up for grabs. Jake and the daisychin were red in the face. Redder, that is. We were all red in the face. And we were all sweating profusely out there. Community car stops have no coolers.

I put my hands on Jake's shoulders in an attempt to reel him in. His muscles were ropey and tense.

"Miles," he screamed at me. That's all he said. Then he turned to the sourheads. "Goddammit, go back to Wildwood!"

Wildwood was a low-income suburb in those days. The phrase "Go back to Wildwood" was a terrible insult back then.

There was this eerie, momentary calm, the kind that is usually needed once class warfare is invoked, so that everyone can consider where they stand.

The sourheads pulled out these homemade whizzers that sparked when they switched them on, and that spat sparks intermittently all over the place. And I said, "Now, hold it." And I put up a hand.

That's when someone blindsided one of the sourheads with a fist in the ear. I heard a whizzer amp up and the subsequent shaky squeal from its target. The car stop suddenly looked like it looks when a cyclone hits a grain silo. It looked exactly like that. I managed to pull Jake out of that mess.

We didn’t talk at all for the rest of our errand. We got the chest and scheduled a Special Courier delivery and went halfsies on the price. I had to spot Jake his half because he went and bought a new stoneware bowl for his parts. I should probably say here, though I probably don't need to, that I hated how Jake just threw the parts into a stoneware bowl without bothering to display them. What good is it if you don't display your collection to its best advantage? But that's the way it was with parts, I found out. Most people who collected them just threw them into a bowl.

I couldn't fix the element in the sub-cooler. Which meant that it would be a good week we'd have to spend in the heat. Jake was especially sheepish about it when he asked me if we could please keep his parts in the new chest freezer. I couldn't say no. The last thing I needed was to have him blowing hairs off my head about his parts going warm. For lack of a better thing to do, and a little out of curiosity, I went to help him transfer them from their little stoneware home in the ever-warming sub-cooler to the new freezer. Jake was ecstatic beyond measure to be doing this. He proudly exhibited his parts, holding them regally as he marched them from room to room. I thought they were rather pathetic, particularly for their unremarkability. Nowhere was there an ear or a tongue or a tooth. Nothing really any average person could name save for the sole finger, which was truly his most prized possession among a bleak and withered assortment of muscles, tendons, and odd, jigsaw cuts of membrane.

And here's what had happened. In the altercation at the comcar stop the day before, one of the sourheads had dropped an air cap. I saw it gleaming on the ground there like a little bullet and I snatched it up. I'd always wanted to try Sour Air, and anyway it was just one cap. And when we were done transferring the parts and Jake was brushing his hands together for a job well done, I went into my cube and got out the cap and huffed it. Good and deep.

Sour Air is elegantly poor, like cheap aftershave.

And when I came back into the room, I saw Jake standing there with the freezer open, smiling down on his parts like a proud papa.

"You're never going to have the whole person," I said. The Sour Air was making me itch all over on the inside. "And anyway you keep ruining our days with those things."

I was not at my most eloquent, but I honestly don't think anyone could be so in my situation.

Jake bit his upper lip and breathed through his nose and then he turned his back to me. Then he shook a little and whipped around in a frenzy. "You prove to me they aren't him!"

I had said nothing about them not being Bobo Schmuley. And I told him so.

The drug was a wonderful thing, for it evened me out where I needed it. "Let's talk this over in the sub-cooler," I said calmly. "It's warming up, but it's a lot better than standing out here."

He was cowering beneath me.

I said, "Jake, it's a beautiful day outside."

He said something about me not knowing what I was talking about. I found I was okay with that.

"Jake, you are parts obsessed, and it has to stop."

I had blood on my hand. Under my nails.

And then what happened was I was waking up someplace else. I was in the sub-cooler, and it was dark, and I was lying down, and Jake was sitting next to me and cradling his wrist and weeping silently.

I won't go through the whole scenario, only that Jake told me through his tears that I'd been screaming nonsense when I grabbed his wrist and tore it open with my nails, and I said the most awful things to him and about his parts.

I sat up. My head screamed in pain and there was a dull buzzing or ringing inside there somewhere, fading as if attached to a dream. I caressed the back of his neck and he shriveled up and then let go all at once, sobbing miserably. I think I was crying too. I don't remember. It was a terrible day that ended in a terrible night.

I woke up the next morning and Jake was still asleep, curled up like a dog next to me. We were both drenched in sweat. The browser wall lit up with a silent message that said Jake had won another auction. A five-inch sliver of Bobo Schmuley's right shoulder blade would be arriving soon. I had a tough time deciding whether to wake him or let him sleep, trying to think which would be worse. I came to the conclusion that letting him sleep through it would be worse, but I didn't want to wake him. I didn't want to have to get excited about parts. I was through pretending.

The next day was when the bad stuff happened. Jake's new part arrived. The Special Courier was a snarling thing that stunk of Sour Air and chicken scat.

Special Couriers get bad press so often it's hard not to join in sometimes.

I gave the parcel to Jake. He kept his head down when he grabbed it from me, and he took it into his cube in the sub-cooler.

About an hour later he emerged with this dour look on his face. He pointed behind him. "Scapula," he said. Then he slunk back into his cube. A minute or two later, I heard him call.

Grudgingly I went, knowing full well it would come to no good end. Jake was holding up two identical pieces of bone.

"It can't be a dupe," he said.

"They're the same," I said. "A scapula is – what do you call it? What do you call something that's different when it's either left or right?"

He shifted his gaze from one part to the other.

"Well, that does it then," I said, and I left him there.

The heat was unbearable. The sub-cooler regulator part was due to arrive in six days. We bought a couple of ice dollies to sleep with. That helped a little.

Sometime the next afternoon, I realized Jake had not spoken to me for the past twelve hours. I guess you don't pay any attention to certain things you'd rather not admit to, or maybe there is a superstitious wrinkle in all of us that makes us afraid to notice something for fear that it may not actually be there. Whatever the case, I was grateful for Jake's silence. I could keep to myself and read, and sniff Sour Air – I neglected to mention that I ordered a case of caps the day after my first experience with the stuff. It came later on in the day. The package had been tampered with and the case was three caps short. It's no secret that Special Couriers palm a couple here, a couple there. I filed a euthanization request against the Special Courier that delivered the parcel. Back then, you still had to submit euthanization requests in person. I was lucky that I didn't have to wait long on line. I'd heard horror stories.

I should hear back in four weeks to schedule my secondary assessment exam. By then I probably won't be interested anymore.

I looked up and there was Jake holding a piece of ice to his lip, tears streaming down his doughboy face.

The air made me not care about Jake so much. It even gave me a strange confidence about the future—and I know why it is that sourheads are often regarded as psychics.

But then I saw him standing there with a bag of stuff

packed. And I looked and the new stoneware bowl was gone. I didn't want to look in the new freezer, but I did. He watched me look and he didn't say anything.

I brought him into the sub-cooler and told him to sit.

"Jake, this is all about parts, isn't it? Parts caused all this. And now parts are gonna end it. I'll collect them with you, and we'll start new, OK? We'll make it like nothing ever happened, and your wrist and your lip'll get better and there'll be parts for everyone, right? Bobo Schmuley forever, and all that?"

He breathed through his nose. It looked as though acquiescence was trying to escape in a sneeze. "Mm-mm, no. No."

"Come on, Jake. Be a man."

"No. You don’t get it. Because underneath it all, you don't believe. And you hit me."

I went to take his head but he shrunk away. "I'm sorry I tore your wrist and hit you in the face, Jake."

He didn't respond to that, and it made me more ashamed to look at him. I was thinking maybe the air caps were a bad idea to begin with, as it amplified every emotion. So I decided never again with those blasted things.

"I'm moving out, Miles."

"Don't do that," I said, huffing another cap.

"No, I can't stay. You hate me enough to want to do some serious damage like this." Here he fingered the medi-skin patch on his wrist.

There was a buzz of hate and fear inside me. "Who's going to take care of you?"

"Don't worry about me," he said. "I won't be hurt anymore by you, and that's all that matters right now. All's I know is I can’t stay here." Here he started to cry. His chin was on his chest.

I told him the sub-cooler part was coming soon.

"You can abuse me all you want, but don't tell me my parts aren't from the real man."

I know I shook my head to this.

Jake rubbed his eyes with the collar of his dingey shirt. "I've been doing a lot of mulling over this the past twenty-four. Miles, if you're gonna get along in life, you have to understand something..." He took a couple of long, clear breaths with no sob-sucking in between. "You can't tell me, or anyone for that matter, that their parts don't belong to anyone. Because if there isn't a name attached, it's just parts. Y'understand? Without a name, we're all just parts. Do you understand?"

I needed some more air, and even while I squirmed, he even had the audacity to put his hand on my arm. "Do you understand, Miles?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Then I'll kill you," I said, "and sell your parts under the name Bobo Schmuley."

It was a terrible thing to say. I wish I hadn't said it.

Jake left. He hasn't been back.

I hadn't known he was capable of this.

I'm scared he's gonna be hurt out there. I'm afraid he'll get killed. And I'm afraid to find out if he does. And I don't ever want to hear about parts.

END

“Parts” is copyright Paul Lorello, 2017.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprint of “The Subtler Art” by Cat Rambo.

[Music plays out]

]]>Parts
by Paul Lorello
I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on ...Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 31 for January 11, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Before I get started, I'd like to let you know about a slight format change for GlitterShip. If you enjoy listening to GlitterShip via podcast or reading the fiction on our website as the stories are released, don't worry! That's not going to change. However, GlitterShip's stories will be released in 4 seasonal issues per year starting this month with Winter 2017. These issues will be available to purchase at the beginning of the season in EPUB, MOBI and PDF format and will include three months' worth of stories. If you like what we do here and would like to support GlitterShip, as well as get an electronic copy of the stories to keep, check out GlitterShip.com/buy.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Parts" by Paul Lorello.

Paul Lorello is a freelance writer from Ronkonkoma, New York. His fiction has appeared in Big Pulp's Kennedy Curse anthology, Black Chaos: Tales of the Zombie, Membrane, The Big Adios, Way Out West, and Pseudopod. In 2014, the Pseudopod podcast of Paul's story, "Growth Spurt", was chosen as the winner of the coveted Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Short Story. Paul lives with three quadrupeds and one biped. He knows very little about everything.

Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Jake had about sixteen more bids on other parts of Bobo Schmuley. He feverishly browsed them, like watching all these little pots of water set to boil. I failed to mention that this was merely his latest acquisition. That more of Bobo Schmuley was gathered up in a stoneware bowl in Jake's room. They listed the items for auction piecemeal. Bit by bit, as it were. Whet the appetites of folks like Jake for as long as they possibly could, issuing little teasers on newstables and crawl signs, a scroll on the side of a community car—as if the community car industry hadn't alr]]>

Salome’s hand is the hinge and John the Baptist’s head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn’s Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I’m recognized and expected. Though since I’ve come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twiste [...]

]]>City of Chimeras

by Richard Bowes

1.

Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn's Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I'm recognized and expected. Though since I've come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twisted and beyond logic. Recently certain ones have appeared in Gotham who can scan and probe as well as my lover Calithurn or any other Fey. And these newcomers mean us no good. This time however, it's Prince Cal himself and I let him into my mind.

"Enemies from this world and Faery are at my throat," he announces. "Though my father has abandoned me, his enemies have not. My cousins from the South and their friends from the West are closing in. I need you by my side, Jackie Boy."

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Welcome to GlitterShip episode 30 for November 22, 2016. I am your host, Keffy, and I have a story to share with you today, but a message first.

We are two weeks into the longest nightmare many of us have ever faced, and a resurgence of horror for those of us who have been through the darkness before.

I have no gentle platitudes to offer today. I am sure that I am not alone in fluctuating between broken-hearted grief, staring terror and burning rage.

I tweeted most of this yesterday, but I feel that it bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating.

There are already people telling you the Right or Best or Most Effective way to resist fascism. Some of these Best ways are not accessible to everyone, for a number of reasons. Some have higher costs for some groups than they do for others.

There is no One Single Best Way to fight fascism. The Best Way is anything you can do. Maybe you can make unlimited phone calls. Maybe you can take to the street. Maybe you can't. Maybe you can do something else. Maybe you can survive.

What if the only thing you can do is remind your friends and the rest of us fighting that we are loved, and we need to drink some water? Do that. What if the only thing you can do is wake up and tell your friends that you are still here? THAT IS WORTH DOING.

There are people who say the best way is to wait. Or that unless you do X, your effort is worthless. Don't listen to them. It is true that some single actions will have more immediate effect than others. But, the answer is not "Do THIS THING or DON'T BOTHER."

The truth is that we need EVERYBODY to fight the rising tide of fascism at EVERY STEP using ANYTHING THEY CAN.

What are YOUR skills? What can YOU do? Do that. Keep doing it. In the darkest hours of humanity, we have still needed people to cook meals, to fold a blanket, to hand a cup of water, to give a hug, to babysit, to say "you are meaningful."

RESISTANCE IS NOT A SINGLE HERO. RESISTANCE IS MILLIONS OF ACTS BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE MEAT GRINDER.

Many of the contributors, creators and listeners to GlitterShip are marginalized along one or many axes that make them feel threatened after this horrible expression of white supremacist power in the United States. We must all stand together to protect all of our people, all the way to the most vulnerable of us. If you are queer or trans, make sure that you are protecting those among us who are also people of color, or poor, or disabled. Those of us with more privilege to higher standards. Those of us who are white, who are not members of targetted faiths, we must be willing to stand between our friends and those who would destroy them.

It isn't easy. Oh, it isn't.

I admit that I spent some time wondering how I was going to make things happen, if GlitterShip is worth it, considering what we face. The first two years of episodes have been difficult, partly for personal reasons, and partly for the rising despair as all of this around us keeps slipping into horror.

But. GlitterShip remains. I am a queer, trans writer and editor. I am selecting stories that speak to me, many from among the voices of other queer and trans people, many of whom have very different backgrounds from myself. Authors of stories I have run are trans, non-binary, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, immigrants, latinx, disabled, asian, and on and on.

There is a lot of work to be done, but GlitterShip will remain. We will continue to be a voice in the dark. We're still here.

Our story for today is "City of Chimeras" by Richard Bowes.

Richard Bowes is an award winning author of science fiction and fantasy. His fiction has won two World Fantasy awards, a Lambda award, Million Writers, and International Horror Guild awards. He has published six novels, four short story collections and seventy-five stories. Many of his works are listed on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database if you would like to read more of his work.

City of Chimeras

by Richard Bowes

1.

Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn's Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I'm recognized and expected. Though since I've come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twisted and beyond logic. Recently certain ones have appeared in Gotham who can scan and probe as well as my lover Calithurn or any other Fey. And these newcomers mean us no good. This time however, it's Prince Cal himself and I let him into my mind.

"Enemies from this world and Faery are at my throat," he announces. "Though my father has abandoned me, his enemies have not. My cousins from the South and their friends from the West are closing in. I need you by my side, Jackie Boy."

This is just my lord in full dramatic flight. A half-breed with half a talent, I can block probes but I have no ability to reply. In any case there's not much I've been able to say to him lately.

And I still have time before I need to be back beside him. Part of my half Fey birthright is the gift of Foretelling. And even in the worst future I have seen, he won't leave the mortal earth until this afternoon.

The studio door swings open. Power is out in the city and seen from here in the silver morning sunlight the interior of the studio looks like a dark cavern.

The gate keeper is a mortal, young naturally in this house, a girl I am certain. What I had thought last time was short, feathery gold hair I see now is short gold feathers that cover her head, legs and arms. A small russet robe is draped over the rest of her body.

She steps aside saying, "He's still in bed," and indicates the way.

The skylights above are dirty; most of the tall windows are curtained. In a jumble of costumes and props, I make out a green and silver farthingale and an amber and blue doublet and hose tossed over a pool table, a Wehrmacht helmet hung on the high back of a wooden throne.

A sudden shaft of sun points up a blue and white pattern of pagodas and willow trees on a stretch of tiled wall.

As I approach the Japanese privacy screens at the far end of the studio, a spaniel with the eyes of a child barks and backs up. A naked boy with a V of reddish hair on his chest is flushed from behind the screens and scuttles out of my path, one hand half concealing his crotch, the other clutching a donut. Green eyes and white teeth flash in what might be a fox's smile or snarl. I think I can hear the click of his nails on the floor.

Since I first saw him here, I have been curious about the fox boy. I calculate that by the reckoning of the middle earth, I'm in my early twenties and that he's a year or so younger. But time has already put a mark or two on him. As a half-Fey, I am untouched and forever young.

I part two screens and look inside. On his huge, disorderly bed half covered with a sheet lies a large man with a big belly, dark hair on his face and body, thin hair on his head. Scars new and old: the jagged ones on his left shoulder and chest are more recent rough repairs of knife or broken bottle wounds. Neat laser traces on the knee outside the sheet indicate sleek, old fashioned replacement surgery.

The artist who calls himself Caravaggio is half awake. "Jackie Boy all ephemeral and flickering," he says focusing his eyes on me. I don't much like that nickname and he knows it. In the land of the Fey, Jackie Boy is a way of indicating my half human status. In this place, the word boy refers not to age so much as lack of money and position.

"Getting awakened by an angel is not necessarily a good sign." He sits up with a groan with the sheet still around him. "Nope, still alive. Everything hurts."

"You said you had something to show me."

"Well to show you and your lord. I was hoping against hope that he would stop by," he says and stumbles out of bed with a rueful smile. Some passions aren't even forlorn wishes. And the one he has for Calithurn qualifies.

The sheet falls away and the fox boy, now in the loose boxer shorts that are often all the clothing a street urchin wears, reappears from the dusk. He holds out a dark green hooded robe into which Caravaggio inserts his arms without looking. The fox and I may be about the same age but I am a young man with connections and a bit of money. I've started wearing silk drawers in the same style as his under my riding britches. But a boy like the fox probably owns not much more than the, knee-length shorts he has on.

The kitchen, I know, lies through a nearby door. From there comes the smell of coffee and toasting bread and the sound of an alto singing a chant. That singer is joined by a husky not quite human voice way off key. Laughter follows and silence.

Half walking, half stomping, flicking switches and cursing when they don't respond Caravaggio makes his way across the floor until we reach the screening area. There he touches a wall panel and a small generator hums up on the roof. The alto from the kitchen, with fur as black as a panther's, chants as he brings out large mugs of coffee.

The artist hits a couple of buttons and on a screen before us is an old map of Gotham. The magic island between two rivers lies at the center with New Jersey and the outer boroughs around the edges. Then the map tears open and a winged horse with a rider in gold armor leaps through: Prince Calithurn.

No such event has actually taken place of course. My lord is not in the habit of intentionally performing circus stunts.

The screen fades to a tumbled down street where an impossibly tall man, semi-translucent, seems to disappear into the broad daylight only to flicker back into sight as he speaks to a crowd. "We will take what is best from here and what is best from the Kingdom Under The Hill. We will make of these a new realm on Earth…."

This actually did happen. It was during Cal and my first days here. That was when I first spotted Caravaggio and his camera. The crowd, when the camera pans it, is colorful; one or two sporting wings where there should be arms, a couple with faces that slip between human and animal. But everyone, human and chimera alike, are enraptured, a rabble willing to be roused.

Then on screen I see that the almost ephemeral Calithurn, without missing a beat, has his sword in his hand. The blade twirls in the air, cuts in two a man with a drawn pistol. This also happened but not on the same day, nor in the same place.

The artist says, "I need so little from you and your prince to tell my story. Just a few samples. Computers will do the rest."

On the screen is a large room and the only light is coming through the windows, a place of dark split by areas of sunlight full of girls and boys with bare feet, knees and arms but who wear raffish feathered hats, elbow length gauntlets, belts with daggers. These are ruffians who watch, half mocking and half in awe as an angel in gold and jewels, brushed leather jacket and, polished knee boots, suede knickers and a flowing silk shirt, his hair a halo, his ringed fingers trailing away like phosphorus, stands before a tough man in a battered motorcycle jacket and says, "I summon you in the name of my Lord Calithurn."

The man is Caravaggio himself, sporting a beard that he doesn't have. The angel is me, standing where I never stood and saying what I have never said: all of this through the worldly magic of cameras and computers.

"This is the look I'm driving for, the film I'm striving to create," he says. "One where men at their worktables are summoned to greatness by angels while their pretty little friends look on amazed."

All of this startles me. The Foretelling is a skill of the Fey in which some of us have visions of our possible futures. This disheveled mortal seems to have magic at least as great.

He says, "I'd like to see you as one of the crowd at the table too when we have you here all bare and informal."

He finds his joke amusing. I ignore him.

Suddenly the power comes back on in Gotham and all around us in the studio the mysterious shapes and muted colors are revealed to be broken furniture, piles of tattered costumes and random accumulations of junk.

My host turns and shouts, "Dowse them!" The black figure moves gracefully, humming, smiling, flicking switches until we are back in a circle of artificial light.

"Turn this way, you creature of another world," the artist says viewing me through a lens. "Yes, that expression is perfect for an angel. Polite impatience."

To mortals here in their earth the Fey, even half-breeds, are creatures of wonder and, they hope, salvation. Caravaggio calls himself a director, an auteur. What he is, at least in part, is a scavenger of images. Scavenging is the local industry.

"What you saw is what I finished yesterday," Caravaggio says. "I'm going to play it by ear and eye. Since I don't know what Calithurn and you have planned.

"Please tell him," he says, "That I'll go wherever he wishes for as much or as little a time as he has to spare me. I'll immortalize him. People will flock to him. He will be a hero, a mayor, a President, a king."

He pauses. "You're impressed by my impudence."

I'd come here this morning to see if what he had done was good enough for him to be entrusted with showing Lord Calithurn to the mortal world. "I'm impressed," I tell him. "I want you with me and with Calithurn today. If you agree we'll go to him right now."

He jumps up immediately. "I can have my rig packed and ready in a few minutes. Bring my crew…"

"No. This could be dangerous and it will be hard. Just you and that camera you had that first day. Get ready!"

He gives me an angry look but selects a camera, goes through the contents of a canvas bag, grabs items and stuffs them in. Then he pulls on pants, steps into sandals, flips the hood on his robe over his head and shambles towards the door.

In the land of the Fey, fairy/mortal mongrels like me live in the Maxee, the demimonde that has grown up around the Kingdom Beneath the Hill. We never grow old but are never admitted to the true Elvin lands.

Cross-breed here has another meaning. The sly faced boy who has just made Caravaggio's bed and now sits on it cross-legged, smiling at me as I depart, the black-as-night alto, the feathered girl who opens the door to let us out, are by-blows of the chimera craze that possessed this city in the years before the bombs and earthquake. Genetic manipulation was illegal and thus enticing.

The day is growing warm. On the street, small bare children play in the water spraying from a busted fire hydrant. For a moment I am caught, reminded of doing that back in the Maxee.

Suddenly a bicyclist, a youth whose red skin blends with his entire wardrobe of scarlet silk drawers and the red bandana on his head, rides through the spray, sending shrieking children and drops of water in all directions. His lizard eyes flicker my way.

Longingly I watch him speed down the broken street. The Maxee too had wild boys of a sort but I was the child of a Fey and so was kept a bit apart. I thought about them and envied them their lack of status when I was a child.

Caravaggio looks at the bicyclist and at me and seems amused. I think this whole city is a hunting ground for him. I picture Caravaggio when the want assails him, going out and snagging a partridge girl or cat boy and carrying them indoors to dress a set, to warm a bed.

Heads turn as we hurry along the buckled sidewalks of this devastated but vital place. I hear someone murmur, "The devil steps out with an angel." And I see us reflected in a broken pane of glass: him stomping along like he has hoofed feet and me glowing like a minor sun.

My companion calls out, "Morning, Al. Morning Flo," to the couple opening the soup kitchen on the corner. Under his breath he identifies them to me, "Albert Schweitzer and Florence Nightingale."

It still amazes and amuses me, all these mortals with immortal names. Jimi Hendrix, one eyed and white haired, plays guitar and sings old songs on the street. Calamity Jane collects scrap metal in a big truck that's mostly scrap metal itself. John Henry rides shotgun for her.

Then I hear rolling thunder from further uptown and realize I've allowed myself to be distracted by this city

Suddenly I am probed by a stranger. I block and get probed again. They’re trying to see what I see, to find out where I am. Immediately after that, I receive a command from Calithurn. "Jack, get back here, now!"

At that same moment there is a yellow flash and Lionel Standler appears at the wheel of his cab. With a dead cigar stub in his mouth and a cap pulled down over his eyes, Lionel too has taken a name from the legendary past: the original was an actor who played cab drivers in old movies.

He has become chauffeur for the House of Calithurn. I'd told him to stay out of sight after he'd driven me down here this morning. I help Caravaggio haul himself into the back seat and jump in beside him as the cab takes off.

Deftly swerving around pits in the street, jumping only once onto the sidewalk to avoid a fresh rubble heap on Eighth Avenue; Lionel rolls towards the park and the Palace Calithurn.

The city, Gotham, is a hodgepodge of trash built on the ruins of wonders. Wherever two streets cross at least one of the four buildings on the corners will have been reduced to a pile of rubble years ago and left that way. The lights go off at odd hours of the day and night.

Old men with lined faces and beards will point up to where silver spires once pierced the sky. Women can be gotten to talk of the wonderland of stores that existed here in their youth. They sit on broken benches in a park where an arch has collapsed and a gibbet stands ready and waiting. They say that at night music could once be heard from the open doors of a thousand clubs and blasting out of car radios and that musicians played on subway platforms under the streets.

The life I lived in the Maxee was not so far removed from the ones I see around me. My mother came from Gotham decades ago in human terms; years as the Fey reckon it, when it was a powerful and prosperous city.

In Elfland she met and lost my father, a Fey who rose to high rank and abandoned us. She owned The Careless Rapture, a café in the Maxee district and left it to me when she died.

It was there that Calithurn found me when he was having trouble with his father, Clathurin, the King Beneath the Hill. He hid out in my bedroom upstairs from the café when the King's officers were looking for him.

And I was the only one he took with him when he fled from that place of well ordered magic and quiet oppression to the gut-wrenching stench and glimpses of grandeur, the chaos and chimeras of the mortal world and the city of Gotham.

It has never happened before but I've had two separate Foretellings of Calithurn and my future. Both are vivid but both can not be true. In one we ride through the city on winged horses to the cheers of the crowds. In the other we stand on a hill in the wind and rain surrounded by our enemies with no hope of escape. Lately, the second has seemed the most likely.

Cal has told me many times that we will not go back; surrender does not enter into it. We will face death right here, the two of us. I no longer think he really believes this.

2.

From a few blocks away, I can see the Palace Calithurn bathed in Glamour and the noonday sun. Flecks of light, like bits of diamonds, shine in the black stone surface. The flags of the prince, a silver unicorn leaping over a blue globe with the inscription in Elvish, I Invite Your Envy, fly in a constant magic breeze above the turrets.

Lionel stops when I tell him to. "There may be trouble. Keep out of sight," I say, "Be ready to take Caravaggio back to his studio."

What magic I have is passive. Prepared for troubles today, I wear my favorite Fey clothing and my most precious ornaments and jewelry. I have a wallet with sixty thousand dollars in local currency in the pouch pocket of my riding britches. In my jacket pocket is a rap gun that can knock down ten men at fifty paces. In my right boot is a jump knife that will come to my hand from three feet away.

When the earth moved and the city fell, some parts that were built on solid rock or saved through fate stood while all else went down. The big old buildings that remain on the west side of the overgrown park are like armed forts, like compounds, where the magnates of the city live.

It was through Calithurn's cleverness or the kind of instinct for ruling that he'd inherited from his father that he had ensorcelled this palace among the castles of the wealthy and powerful. Almost as soon as we arrived, he took a devastated building, not much more than a pile of rubble and through magic and enchantment raised this breath-taking, infuriating place.

It lies so close to the headquarters of the Bank of Shanghai which owns the city's future and to the home of Santee, the boss who makes and unmakes mayors, that no one dares to assault it or bomb it from the air. A tank lying smashed in the street is testimony to mortal frailty and the eternal vigilance of Lord Calithurn.

Caravaggio pauses for a moment pointing his camera up. "Chutzpa," he mutters, "Hubris. Balls beyond those of mortal men."

As we approach the front gates, the building shimmers for a moment. Only I notice that the Fey Glamour has faltered.

The guards who keep back the constant throngs of favor seekers and gawkers call themselves Fess Parker and John Wayne. Parker is a tall thin man in buckskin and a raccoon cap, one blue eye squinting against the sun, the other wide and clear. He cradles an AK47. The other man is husky, hands like hammers, guns strapped on both hips. His eyes are hidden in the shadow of his Stetson brim. But Wayne telegraphs in his blunt, artless way that he's staring at your every move.

They nod, almost bow, to me and wave along my companion who pauses to film them. We pass through the gates into the courtyard where the magic horses, Bellephron and Callistro, snort and flap their wings.

Not two months ago, Cal and I rode these chimeras out of Elfland and into this city. I argued back then that we should let them go home and make ourselves inconspicuous, live among the people and get some sense of this place. Cal would have none of this. He is a prince. So we lived in this palace he wrought and we made ourselves known and envied.

After that first assault failed, the magnates of the city didn't dare attack us. But there were ones in Elfland, enemies of his father, who were happy to find the prince alone except for his half-breed boyfriend. At first Calithurn slapped them away. Now they have returned in numbers.

Inside, on the main stairs, Selesta sweeps past us, her small ears drawn back, and hisses her defiance. An actress, a singer, Calithurn's newest mistress, she still thinks that I'm jealous when all I am is disappointed. About his favorites of the moment, Cal told me, "Mortal toys, Jack, nothing more."

Whereas I, only part mortal, would count as only partly a toy.

I hear what sounds like distant thunder. The palace gives a small lurch and I see us again, Calithurn and myself, just the two of us standing with our horses on a hill with wind and rain and our enemies all round us.

We find Cal in the roof garden sprawled on the longest couch in all of Gotham. He stands and embraces me and for a moment with his golden hair and dark eyes he is the lover I first knew, the one who could suddenly appear swinging in my bedroom window and who, when he departed, would stride across the dawn sky waving farewell.

We came to middle earth, to this city, to form an alliance with the wronged and desperate mortals. With them, we said, we would return to the land of the Fey and break the hold of Clathurin, the King Beneath the Hill, and the father of Cal. Our idea was naïve and thus dangerous.

Where all was sunshine a few minutes before, clouds have rolled in. I find myself deflecting a mental probe from not that far away, and then deflecting another. These aren't attempts to communicate. The Fey who have reached out are trying to smash their way into my consciousness.

Calithurn's eyes flicker and I know he's feeling the same thing. Then he closes his eyes and with arms outstretched, turns 360 degrees. Briefly the probes cease, the sky lightens.

I'd forgotten about Caravaggio. But he's still present, still filming. I turn to introduce him.

And I see in the man's eyes his desire for Calithurn. It's plain that my lord has conquered this mortal artist, this pot bellied man whose scars are the most interesting thing about his body.

My Calithurn's lip curls. He shows the two of us a house in a neighborhood of similar houses, a fat, fairly happy looking little boy on a tricycle, an ordinary couple smiling at what is obviously their child.

As we see the images we are told: Louis Falco, born in Bethpage fifty years ago, child of a civil servant and a dentist. They never understood why you took the name Caravaggio. You blight this world.Turn that camera off or you and it will be a puddle on the floor."

I catch the anger in Caravaggio's eyes, the contempt in Calithurn's glance and step between them. With my lord in such a mood, expressing his rage would be fatal for the mortal.

At that moment, the attack begins again. Thunder rolls and lightning splits the sky. One probe after another hits us. This distracts Calithurn enough that his Glamour, the magic that holds the palace together, flickers. I hear the building groan.

"We need to get everybody out before people are hurt," I say. "We're drawing fire and putting them in danger."

Calithurn shrugs, "It is time we set out on our travels," he says and sounds almost bored.

I yell for the palace to be evacuated and we head for the stairs. The building shakes as we descend. In the courtyard Bellephron and Callistro stamp and unfurl their wings. Servants stream past. Chunks of stone fall around us. Selesta is there with a suitcase full of what she considers to be valuables. Calithurn mounts Bellephron and lifts her up without ceremony. I'm on Callistro when the gates open and we canter out into the street.

"Get the people away from this place," I hear myself shouting. Fess Parker and John Wayne and the other guards force the crowds back. The horses spread their wings and glide across the street and into the park.

I hear a roar and a collective gasp and look back. My lord has abandoned his toy. Without his attention, the Palace is gone, disappeared in a cloud of dust. The rubble we first found is all that remains. I spot Caravaggio filming it all.

3.

Entering the park, I know that Calithurn is going back to Elfland and that his time in Gotham has been a kind of royal tantrum, his talk of helping the mortals was idle chatter. Cal has been my lover and is my lord. I will be loyal to him and true while he is here. But as I've fallen out of love with him, I've fallen in love with this city.

We pause on a grassy rise and it's somewhat like what the Foretelling showed me. But that was a wilderness and a blasted heath and this is an overgrown park with buildings or the ruins of buildings visible through the trees, with Selesta whimpering and the remains of squatters' camps underfoot.

It's dark, though, with the wind blowing rain as I'd foreseen and I can see figures, some mounted on winged steeds, in the trees before us. This is the beginning of the road to Elfland and we are not going to get through it without a fight. Cal looks around and it occurs to me that he has run out of ideas and is waiting to be rescued.

Then I'm hit by mental probes, one after another. I've never been punched repeatedly in the face but that's what I think of when I can't block all of them and some get through. I feel bits of memory, my mother's tired smile, my father's constant surprise at his half mortal son, the streets of the Maxee where I grew up, being yanked out of my skull.

Someone catches images from my Foretelling, sees as I saw the pair of us surrounded in the wind and rain. Someone else finds the fear I feel as this happens and twists it. Poor Callistro, whom I'd been trying to protect, gets spooked and rises up in terror, bucks and throws me.

Then I'm on the ground fallen on my right shoulder. There is shooting pain, my limbs are jerking and my head is banging up and down. There's blood in my throat, my left eye is clouded and my shoulder feels like it's broken.

Cal is standing over me broadcasting, "Off of him you cowards! Who will fight me? Let each of you sons of bitches challenge me one at a time!" And I know this is the end of us and want to be on my feet beside him.

Then all at once with nothing first, there is a huge bang and bright light. The rain is gone and a great voice bellows, 'WHO DARES DO THIS TO MY SON?"

Cal is silent, staring and I manage to half rise and look where he does. King Clathurin and all his power are here, thousands of Fey with their armor glittering. Clathurin is a big man but at this moment, he is gigantic.

"STAND FORTH AND FACE ME," he commands and waves his scepter wand. When I look over to the trees, there are bodies strewn about on the grass and none of them are moving.

King Clathurin looks around for a moment then he turns and comes to Prince Calithurn who steps forward. They embrace and Clathurin's host raises their weapons in salute.

I struggle to my feet when I see the king walking away with his arm around his son. And I understand that Calithurn's expedition to Gotham was just a way of getting the attention of The King under the Hill.

The presence of so much Glamour makes my eye clear, stops the bleeding in my mouth and the pain in my shoulder.

Cal hasn't even looked back. I'm having trouble thinking. But I understand that if I did return, he and I will not be together. I will live again in the Maxee, the great demimonde, like my mother and all the other past and present lovers of the Fey. I will become one of the local legends. "That half breed was the lover of Calithurn. Long ago, they went off to mortal lands together."

Selesta trails after Lord Calithurn not understanding that she's already forgotten just as I am. I wonder if my old coffee house the Careless Rapture is still there and if they will think to give it to her.

Would I have gone back with them if Clathurin had taken me in his arms as he did his son? Probably. But that wasn't going to happen. I am a half-breed who has become inconvenient.

Will I follow Cal if he turns and gestures for me? No. I am going to remain here with the other chimera.

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, King Clathurin is gone, along with Calithurn and the rest, gone with not a trace of their Glamour left behind.

And I'm alone in this strange land, feeling like the insides have been knocked out of me. The Fey do not laugh and do not cry and I inherited that from my father. I did not cry at my mother's death and I do not cry at this.

It strikes me that the futures I foresaw for Cal and myself may just have been scenes from movies that hadn't yet been made. At that moment, the Foretelling takes me again.

I see myself in high summer with the fox boy and some of the others from the studio. We are on a sidewalk walking down to the river. I am dark-tanned, not ephemeral in the least, dressed like the other street kids in nothing but my baggy shorts and with my hair tied up under a blue head bandana. It would seem to be late summer, four or five months from this moment. And I'm too dizzy and confused to know what to make of it.

"Jackie, you look like you're lost," I hear Caravaggio say. He's right beside me but sounds like he's far off and under water. "You took quite a fall there."

He turns me around and I see the yellow cab up on the grass. Lionel helps me into the back seat. Caravaggio gets in on the other side and we make a U turn.

"It doesn't seem like he can take care of himself," Lionel says "His boyfriend's got enemies that would love to pick him clean. No doubt off him."

None of this feels like it has anything to do with me. We drive out of the park. A mob of scavengers is crawling over the rubble of the Palace Calithurn, a couple of them spot the cab, one or two have guns. But Lionel is too fast for them and speeds away.

"I can hide Jackie among the crew at the studio," Caravaggio says. "But we need to make him less noticeable."

"Here's a place." The cab swerves and suddenly it's twilight in an alleyway between two buildings. I notice that Caravaggio has attached a small camera to the cab ceiling. Lionel opens my door of the cab. "OK Jackie," he says, "Hand over the clothes and valuables."

"Why?" I try to go for the rap pistol.

Caravaggio says, "Because there are two men and a boy in this cab," and pins me. Lionel pulls my ibex leather jacket and silk shirt off over my head. There's a burst of pain in my shoulder and I cry out.

As they talk they're working on me. My head spins, pain shoots through my shoulder and I can't stop them. In moments the rings on my fingers, the one my mother gave me, the one that my father owned, are drawn off my hands. My watch and bracelets and earrings and the gold collar around my neck, love gifts of Calithurn get taken.

"Make a move for that jump knife Jackie and I'll break your other arm!" Lionel says. My boots of Elvin leather, the hose woven in Moir, the belt with the heavy silver buckle, are stripped off me.

I hold onto the waist of my riding britches and beg to keep them. Even these knee pants would be a small sign of status and there's the wallet and money in the side pouch. It's just about all I have left.

"I looked forward to doing this," Caravaggio says and yanks them off me. "And this," he adds riffling through my wallet and papers. Lionel pulls down my under shorts to make sure I haven't got anything else to steal but lets me keep those.

"A young man of affairs wearing a small fortune on his back one minute," says Lionel, gathering everything up, "A boy with nothing in the world but his silk drawers the next."

It's a warm day but I understand what's been done to me and feel like I've been run through with an icicle. Even if I could find the way, I can't go back to Elfland like this and I have no one here to turn to.

Caravaggio pulls my hair into a tight knot in back, ties a bandanna on my head. He pops open a palm sized screen and shows me the picture the camera is capturing. I'm amazed to see myself as I appeared in the Foretelling.

Caravaggio, murmurs, "You think only Fey can read minds, Jackie Boy? I've seen how you looked at my crew, at the boys on the street. You were curious but disdainful. Now you're going to find out about that life first hand."

Driving downtown, Caravaggio, speaks softly. "If we hadn't gotten you out of the park, you'd be dead by now. We could have left you in that alleyway and you'd be dead by midnight. You're still alive and I'm going to keep you that way. You're going to learn how to survive in this world."

He has his arm around me and massages my neck like I'm a nervous show animal, and says, "With what I shot today and my half of the take from what you had on you, I'm going to make the greatest film to come out of this city in a decade."

I want to ask him why I've been robbed and humiliated and what is going to become of me. Then we arrive outside the studio and Lionel opens the cab door. I realize that in the course of an afternoon I've lost everything and now am nobody. And anyone who sees me from now on will know that. I flinch away and want to hide.

But Caravaggio forces me out onto the sidewalk saying, "Get used to it Jackie. The first time you ever ordered me around, which was the first time we met, I told Lionel I'd lead you into my studio dressed just as you are right now."

"And I thought you were crazy," Lionel laughs. Before he leaves, he says, "Go easy on him Caravaggio; he always tried to do right by me and the others."

Caravaggio has hold of my good arm or I'd try somehow to cover myself. I did not cry for my mother or for Lord Calithurn and I do not cry at this. Though if I was mortal, I think I would.

This world has traps a Fey could never imagine. This morning I strode down this street and heads turned. Now the pavement is rough on my bare feet and I need to watch out for broken glass. In the Foretelling I walk on it easily.

Ordinary passersby pay almost no attention to one like me. But when the feathered girl opens the door I see in her eyes awe that her boss has magic that can turn an arrogant Fey into this cringing street urchin.

The rest of the chimeras, more than I ever guessed were there, gather as I'm led by the hand through the studio. Some are astounded; some are highly amused that the well-heeled visitor of the morning has returned to the zoo, stripped and bruised, as the newest addition to the menagerie. I hear giggles and whispers as I'm shown to Caravaggio's bed.

In the Foretelling these are my friends and I can look people in the eye. But that's a future possibility. There's more wonder and terror in any square foot of Gotham than in all of Elfland.

Exhaustion is about to take me when I hear Caravaggio say, "His name is Jackie Boy and he's come from a long way off to find his true home among us." Then he tells the story of how I lost everything I thought I had.

END

"City of Chimeras" was originally published in Helix, summer of 2006.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back in early December with a GlitterShip original!

[Music plays out]

]]>City of Chimeras
by Richard Bowes
1.
Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I ...City of Chimeras

by Richard Bowes

1.

Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn's Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I'm recognized and expected. Though since I've come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twisted and beyond logic. Recently certain ones have appeared in Gotham who can scan and probe as well as my lover Calithurn or any other Fey. And these newcomers mean us no good. This time however, it's Prince Cal himself and I let him into my mind.

"Enemies from this world and Faery are at my throat," he announces. "Though my father has abandoned me, his enemies have not. My cousins from the South and their friends from the West are closing in. I need you by my side, Jackie Boy."

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Welcome to GlitterShip episode 30 for November 22, 2016. I am your host, Keffy, and I have a story to share with you today, but a message first.

We are two weeks into the longest nightmare many of us have ever faced, and a resurgence of horror for those of us who have been through the darkness before.

I have no gentle platitudes to offer today. I am sure that I am not alone in fluctuating between broken-hearted grief, staring terror and burning rage.

I tweeted most of this yesterday, but I feel that it bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating.

There are already people telling you the Right or Best or Most Effective way to resist fascism. Some of these Best ways are not accessible to everyone, for a number of reasons. Some have higher costs for some groups than they do for others.

There is no One Single Best Way to fight fascism. The Best Way is anything you can do. Maybe you can make unlimited phone calls. Maybe you can take to the street. Maybe you can't. Maybe you can do something else. Maybe you can survive.

What if the only thing you can do is remind your friends and the rest of us fighting that we are loved, and we need to drink some water? Do that. What if the only thing you can do is wake up and tell your friends that you are still here? THAT IS WORTH DOING.

There are people who say the best way is to wait. Or that unless you do X, your effort is worthless. Don't listen to them. It is true that some single actions will have more immediate effect than others. But, the answer is not "Do THIS THING or DON'T BOTHER."

The truth is that we need EVERYBODY to fight the rising tide of fascism at EVERY STEP using ANYTHING THEY CAN.

What are YOUR skills? What can YOU do? Do that. Keep doing it. In the darkest hours of humanity, we have still needed people to cook meals, to fold a blanket, to hand a cup of water, to give a hug, to babysit, to say "you are meaningful."

RESISTANCE IS NOT A SINGLE HERO. RESISTANCE IS MILLIONS OF ACTS BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE MEAT GRINDER.

Many of the contributors, creators and listeners to GlitterShip are marginalized along one or many axes that make them feel threatened after this horrible expression of white supremacist power in the]]>

She’s on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she’s dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth’s wing.

For a while I lean [...]

]]>LEARNED PEOPLE is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She's on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

No, not dead.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 29 for November 1, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Learned People" by Chelsea Eckert.

Chelsea Eckert is currently attending UNC Greensboro for her MFA in creative writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared (or will appear) in over twenty-five venues. Stalk her like a hungry catamount at http://chelseaeckert.me.

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She's on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

No, not dead.

I'm thinking: Has she eaten? When did I sell her the Drops? What day did she have one?

I haven't been to Mr. Arvo's house, but he's likely in the same position as Tess. In the same stupor. Everyone at school, far as I know, dropped out a couple weeks after I started selling the CosmiDrops to them. Administrators, teachers, the kids. The kids first. I didn't really mourn anybody until more than just the bottom-feeding pipe-bomber types stopped attending.

"Tess," I whisper. A name is a kind of, you know, power. A Czech man, I read in Reader's Digest or somewhere, once brought his wife out of a five-year coma just by saying her name a hundred times every day. I try to do the same right now and I lose track somewhere in the forties. Wouldn't have mattered.

So I shake her. It's like throwing rocks into a pond. Stillness is the natural way of things. A body at rest, and such. But—maybe—

I press my face between her shoulder blades, gripping the sides of her arms. My dad Pe and myself—both of us to blame for this, squarely.

But—no. It's not our fault.

I kiss Tess on the back of the head. Her curls lay on my lips, and she smells, just oh-so, of her flavored cigars, her contraband. My mind spins, drifts. Becomes a wave, swarming. Yet it never really touches down on any shore, any subject, least of all fate.

People should have helped Pe and me.

Human beings can do that easy.

Hunger. Okay.

Real, multiple-day hunger, pick-at-the-dirty-plates hunger, because you can't afford the food—that was me and Pe, after my mother died. Not too many folks in America know any kind of shit about that, I don't think.

You ask: how do you suddenly go hungry, nice-family-nice-house?

Follow me here.

Your monthly rent for the two-bed-two-bath with the expansive yard might be $1500 a month, and your father, alone, only makes maybe $1700 a month from various patent royalties. And it goes to the rent and it goes to the water bill and it goes to keep up the appearance of comfort.

And you yourself can't find a job, especially because you can't drive, because you can't focus on the tests, because of those hot fists in your gut. And your father is afraid to drive you anywhere unnecessary because the car might get all fucked up, which you can't afford and—etcetera.

Your mother never had life insurance or any kind of contingency plan. No one did, no one does. Tragedy collapses on other folks.

So: your technically-unemployed-but-not-really super-inventive father gets to brainstorming. A million-dollar idea, he believes, lies deep within him and has since birth, like—eggs, inside infant ovaries.

At dawn and dusk me and Pe passed each other on the stairs and that was all. Fatigue really drilled into us, broke up our minds, so that little bits of ourselves floated around in our veins, our bodies, never really congealing. I usually walked to school, and tried to let myself go into the wind, but exhaustion, like muscles to bones, sticks.

Then one evening Pe called me up to the attic, which was his office-slash-lab-slash-mancave-slash-library. To put all the bumbling professor and/or frazzled inventor tropes to rest, maybe, my dad kept it sterile and dignified, dustless though expansive, his books arranged alphabetically by author-then-title, the caged mice and rats chattering along with something like peace, the miniature kitchen wiped down.

Pe turned to me with a tray of upturned lollipops in his hands. The pops looked like little bits of topaz, black and blue and silver, and at first I didn't grasp that they were really edible. They were, it seemed, spheres containing the universe and all its stars, gorgeous in their detailed smallness.

"They're called CosmiDrops," Pe said. He is, I think, a bit disarming, because you can't tell his seriousness from his cheeriness, his jokes from his demands.

"Okay."

"When they're ready—a week or two at most, Evie—you're going to go selling them door-to-door."

"I don't have to try them, do I?" I asked, because—something about their shape, their size, murdered my appetite. Couldn't tell you why at the time. I guess—you wouldn't eat a flower, would you? Out of a crack in the road? Even if you were starved—how brutal would that be? They were that nice, that frighteningly nice to look at. But I trusted Pe more than myself.

"No, Evie. You're just going to be the salesperson." Pe's eyes fluttered. "Remember when you got that one Girl Scout patch, for the cookies? Wonderful times. And wonderful you. You were born under winning stars and you have what your mother, God rest her soul, would have called 'a mouth full of coins. '"

I realized then I hadn't lately been thinking anything like, What would Mom do right about now? And definitely nothing like, What did she think before the semi hit her sedan? It was just me there, physical and on the earth, alone-but-never-lonely like a river good for fishing.

"You could peddle these to everyone," Pe continued. "Successfully. Twenty-five per tray." He leaned in and put a hand on my bicep. "But you are not, under any circumstances, to eat one. They are expensive to make."

When I pried a CosmiDrop out of the tray and held it up to the window, it shined silver pinpricks onto Pe's cheeks.

"Pe, no one's gonna buy these," I said. But he had already tucked his chin in, his eyes overcast with something lukewarm.

At Tess's house I spend three, four hours trying to get her to eat. In health class we'd watched a movie about child abuse for some godawful reason and I remember that, when little kids came in starved, hospitals would smear peanut butter in their mouths. They'd stop refusing food after that. So I do that for Tess—there's only Nutella and that seems like it would do just as well.

I hold the back of her head, prying her mouth open like I would for a petulant elderly cat. In goes the spoon. She gags. I pull it out, but a bit of the hazelnut stuff is on her tongue. It has to do for now.

Tess turns back to the window, her eyes beautifully wide. I don't know where the rest of the Thorsbys are, her parents and older brother. Maybe one was a Zero and got out of town. But then—I sold six boxes of CosmiDrops to them. Six. They wanted to help. So much. Still—if they had helped Pe and me the right way—

Not our fault. If we'd had help—

At the edge of Tess's bed I sit and eat the Nutella out of the jar for a while with all the weariness of a drunk.

"I'll figure this out for you," I say to Tess. The backs of my eyes hurt. "I'll figure it out for your fam, because they're good people. The five of us. We'll—I don't know."

Only after I head into the darkening street do I realize I left out my father.

Pe had mice up there in the attic. The ones with the little blood-colored eyes that are, like, two dollars each at the pet store. Test subjects. They died a few days after Pe revealed the Drops to me. I poked them in their enclosures one morning and they were as thin and light and yellow as old paper. They'd also made no waste at all, no shit, nothing. Not in a whole week.

"Come over for dinner, honey. When was the last time you ate? Tell me." I heard the flick of a lighter at the other end. Tess always did this, lit up hidden in her garden shed among all those earth-smells and dead bulbs and rust, and she was, in my head, like a sole skyscraper peering over the thickest forest imaginable. Something natural and something not, fused together and shiny. She had—made sense, from the day I met her, knee-to-knee on the bleachers at a homecoming game.

"This morning? I had, uh. The saltines in the back in the cupboard. And then your burrito at school. I'll be okay—"

"We should adopt you."

"I know. But then we'd be sisters."

Ha ha ha. Laughter. Good times. Then I said, "Everything'll be okay when the welfare starts a-rolling in. When we get approved."

"If. You can't depend on that. Come over for dinner, now."

"When," I said.

After my mother died Tess kept saying to me shit like, "Pe should use his hands for more than picking his ass." She thought Pe was—eccentric. Like the dad from Beauty and the Beast or something. How could you even think that about a real human being? Then once or twice she threatened to call the cops on him and I pleaded with her, promised her a thousand things I don't even remember now.

But I guess my girl had her reasons.

Look. Before school even started, before the Drops, Tess came over one day. She made a big fuss over me as usual, made me eat all this chalky protein shit her brother gulped down for football like a horse at the trough. Then we went and lay on my bed for a while.

Twilight fell down in no time. I was in a sweaty haze—that sort-of foggy, oatmeal-thick place you get into when you're content. My head was tucked between Tess's shoulder blades, but all her belly muscles under my arms were tense.

"Hear that?" Tess asked.

I resurfaced from unconsciousness. Low vibrations seemed to be rocking the bed and the two of us and in fact the whole house. When I say low I mean super low; it tickled my insides and pricked my guts like the deepest bass drop possible. It was inside me, uncomfortably.

She got up and pulled me up, too. We both looked to the ceiling, which seemed to be the source of the vibration. Someplace upstairs.

Tess said, "Your pops is dicking around up there."

That wasn't fair. Half that shit you see on late-night television, advertised—half that shit is Pe. He just made some bad deals. Few to no royalties, which would have meant we had a lot more money forever. All lump sums, and I don't know where that bit went, but it wasn't with us, and it hadn't been with my mom either. Still: not his fault.

I wanted to go back to bed but Tess left the room and approached the attic stairs. By the time she got to the trapdoor the vibration had stopped. I yelled for Pe, and he yelled back that he was sorry for all the noise, and that he'd stopped now, for the night.

"I don't like this," Tess said, hands on her hips.

"What? What's there not to like?"

"You didn't hear it. The tone. When the house was shaking."

I rubbed my brow.

"The tone," Tess said, clutching my elbows, and I recoiled a bit. She was not a person who touched much except with total passion. "The tone, that's all I can think to describe—it's like an out-of-tune guitar, if the strings—were made of pipes. Thick lead pipes."

"A house shakes, it makes fucked up noises," I said, and wrapped my fingers in her curls. "Back to bed, okay?"

"Thick lead pipes like the kind they used in the Roman Empire," she replied. A long breath flapped out of her, and she laughed. Spell broken. "God, honey. Whatever your dad's doing, it's got me crazy. I need to light soon, I think."

She never did fall back asleep that evening, though.

Next morning before school I worked on the crossword in the paper. I couldn't really concentrate—hunger had neatly squatted in my stomach again. It was always a trespasser. But I liked to distract myself. I'd found a lot of ways to do it.

I said, "Four letters, starts with Q. 'Never winning.'"

Pe sat across from me with a glass of cloudy water, looking overall like an old war machine decommissioned. He'd always been boyishly scrawny—I got comments about it from enamored classmates—but now I saw his age, the way the grief had whittled him. He said, "Yesterday I tried to go to the food bank behind Saint Mary's, but—I couldn't, Evie. I couldn't."

"I know."

"They'll approve us for food stamps. I know. When they do we'll make a bunch of pizzas, how's that."

"Four letters, starts with—oh, quitters. Quit. Uh-huh," I said, scribbling it down. It was the first Tuesday of the month. Beef taco day at school. God. My mom used to say none of the meat they used was real, that it was all soy bits, the stuff not given to prison inmates; my friends, minus Tess, joked it was llama parts, bear parts, gator parts. Into the trash it would go, untouched. So much assumption in that motion. It felt evil.

"Did you put all the trays in the car?" Pe asked. When I nodded, he said, "Odd, that the Drops didn't attract you. But then, you didn't hear the People talking last night, either. Did Tess?"

"Did Tess what?"

"Hear them talking."

For a good forty-five seconds I tried to ken Pe's meaning. He said, "The Learned People. Did she hear them?"

"She heard—the rumbling, whatever it was. It sounded like pipes or something, she said. I don't know. I don't really remember, but she seemed all, like, concerned."

"You must be a Zero, then."

I laid the paper down flat, and I could feel my face wad up like tissue.

"No," Pe said, "no, not a zero, Tess, a Zero. You are not sensitive to the Learned People. They told me some humans aren't." Finally, Pe turned to me. Forty-two and already moon-eyed, water-eyed. "They'll like to meet you."

"Pe."

"I'm telling you this because I see no sense in lying to you, Evie. I never have and I never will."

By the time I got to pre-calc Pe and his words were dead lightbulbs at the back of my memory. I could barely recall the morning. I figured that was what growing up was like.

The CosmiDrops sold gorgeously. I laid a few on teachers and friends and people saw them and were drawn to them. Kind-of like how dachshunds, nose to the ground, circle a single spot to dig at. Our garage housed about a hundred packages—I got rid of all of them.

How I did this: I was fast and I worked all day, in school or out. Because—pity loosens wallets and pockets and checkbooks. I couldn't stand it. Couldn't. Made myself dead tired, just so I could go home and sleep away everyone's shit consciences. So that's how, though this town is, maybe, four thousand folks give or take, probably everyone got a Drop.

Far as I can see, not a single person resisted, except myself. If another Zero lived here—they probably went a-running a while ago.

I wouldn't have had to do this if people had just helped us the normal way.

Cars still zoom down the road in front of the Thorsbys' house. They're from surrounding towns. The noise of the engines crushes me every time—that suddenly expanding thunder, rising up, crushing the krrup of bird and the solemn rf rf rf of everyone's dogs locked up inside and dwindling. I don't try to flag anyone down for help. I close my eyes, instead. Start to walk. Try to find pain in my body. You can assign some meaning to hurt. But nothing's there.

Well: animals don't seem to like the Drops. There's a miracle.

I decide this is an apocalypse. I'm pretty sure it's just our town on its knees like the Lord Himself meant to saunter to earth at any given minute. But apocalypse, you see, means uncovering. And I don't think I knew much about myself or my dad until this started happening. We are practically naked now.

Blocks pass, dead. On the street behind Main, I see a little kid, maybe seven, on her knees outside of a ramshackle apartment complex, her gaze at the sky. She has the same sharp little eyes Tess does. Because it gets really cold at night now I pick her up. Grocery-bag-type dead weight. The door to the second apartment is unlocked and I slip her inside, but don't dawdle. An utterly sacrilegious smell clings to the complex and I realize it's slithering up from the whole town, has been for days now.

Then Main shifts by me, with its uncomfortably adorable Ma-and-Pa shops. I can't handle looking into the windows. Instead I put my hands in my pockets and continue on, head down like a bull or a goat, stubbornly, horns out.

The lights are on at my house, even in the attic. And I think: doesn't the electric company keep graphs or measures or something of all this? The water people? Hasn't anyone noticed our total ejection from society? It's been four days or so since—I mean, is it like in movies, where some fat man writes all the weird stats off as an error?

Well: I know who could answer that.

Upstairs I go. The house is quiet. I know Pe's still home because I can't imagine he'd scamper off like a dog from—this, whatever this is, the Drops situation. It passes through my mind that maybe he's some kind of serial killer, having faked his way through life in human costume. But—no, it's nothing that simple. Nothing that—cinematic.

As I get to the trapdoor the vibrations begin—the ones I felt when Tess was over. The ones that seemed to thrive inside me and multiply, like bugs, like—something nasty. I remember what Tess said: little poison pipes. The house is still silent, though, dead silent, and I rush up into the attic, through the door, calling for Pe.

An awful shadow subsumes me, made of—not darkness. Not the right word. Not even shadow really covers it. If a prism could show us a spectrum made of various kinds of nothing, shades invisible to the eyes of natural things—that. That's curled up in the attic. Nothing around me has form, not even Pe (whom I sensed was nearby, like you sense things with your neck-hair), not his desk, not his books.

Pinpricks of light trail along my fingertips, and against the void they're delicious, warm. Then I sense a sudden and loving heat against my belly and lungs, exactly where the vibrations lived just moments earlier, and I'm—not comforted, but—it all feels normal. As if this show of darkness was organic and natural, like the growth of corn in the fields or a dog running away to die.

It's alright, all of it, and so, good, in its own way. Everything going as planned, as it would, forever.

I can't see any faces. Just their consciousness, on my fingers—yes, I sense lives. Lives and a great collection of knowledge, truths, facts, uncovered bits of the universe, stretching on inside a well-kept castle of infinite capacity. The Learned People. Something is feminine about them, something like the presence of a mother, a wife, even.

Then—something—and the attic returns.

Pe sits on the floor near his desk, his knees curled under his chin like a kid who hates the world. He slips a Drop between his lips and breathes out. But I dive at him. He can't leave me here, no, wouldn't, couldn't, because we're human, we butt against nature, we're nobody's experiment, never, never. When I push on his cheeks the Drop pops onto the floor with a click.

"They were going to come for us," Pe says, and he's weeping. "Everyone's looking up and waiting for the ships, do you see, Evie? We'd have been like rockets escaping gravity."

I shake him, because that's what you do in the movies. Crying, crying—what do you do when your dad cries? I slap him. He meets my eyes with a betrayed look.

I lay my head in his lap. He lays his nose on my shoulder. And it may be inappropriate or whatever but that's what we do, sitting there. Two, three hours, maybe, ruined, the two of us. Then a great rumble storms through the street, the house, Pe and me, mingling with his sobs, and I know what has happened, I know it like I know that all things get older and waste away.

When it's dark I pull out my phone.

"If we'd taken the Drops," Pe moans. "We'd have. I. I. Evie. Evie."

Sirens. I come out with my hands up, because that seems like the right thing to do. Cars everywhere, noise. A few cops dart around. Securing the perimeter, I guess. Took long enough, didn't they? They don't even know why everyone's disappeared and I'm not going to tell them. They'll look in houses and find not a soul, except my father and me. A modern Roanoke. Or the last man on earth and his daughter of doubt and pettiness.

One of the burlier cops rolls up to me as an ambulance slides into the street.

"Ma'am," says the cop. He makes a settle down gesture. Some time passes. I stand there. They pull my dad out of the house on a stretcher, and his body is slack.

A blanket falls on my shoulders. I am directed to a police car. More and more official types are showing up. Men in dark suits like I've never seen before. The word bioterrorism bounces through the air. So does the phrase bureaucratic mess and trauma.

The seat is very hard. The window goes up, trapping a hard smell inside the car. Someone's smoked in here, and the thought of it makes me cry. I decide that we're all fuck-ups and what mighty fuck-ups we are. In my head I make a list of people who won't be alright: myself, Pe, maybe the first few folks who ate the Drops. I decide that the rest of the town has been saved. I decide that Tess has been saved.

END

“Learned People” is copyright Chelsea Eckert, 2016.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprint of "City of Chimeras" by Richard Bowes.

]]>LEARNED PEOPLE is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL
Learned People
by Chelsea Eckert
She's on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against ...

LEARNED PEOPLE is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She's on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

No, not dead.

Full transcript after the cut.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 29 for November 1, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Learned People" by Chelsea Eckert.

Chelsea Eckert is currently attending UNC Greensboro for her MFA in creative writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared (or will appear) in over twenty-five venues. Stalk her like a hungry catamount at http://chelseaeckert.me.

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She's on her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

]]>Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

Full transcript after the cut

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 28 for May 24, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow, read by Amanda Ching.

Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine’s “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” issue, and the Lamba Award-winning “The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard,” among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.

Amanda Ching is a freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in Storm Moon Press, Candlemark & Gleam's Alice: (re)Visions, and every bathroom stall on I-80 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. She tweets @cerebralcutlass and blogs at http://amandaching.wordpress.com.

Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

I asked for Sheldon.

“Ms. Harp is here,” someone said, and then there he was. He was blond, maybe five or six, with a round face like my sister’s. He smiled toothily up at me.

I took his hand. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go.”

And then I woke up. Janet snored softly next to me.

I touched the space on my body where my womb would have been, if I’d been born with one, and ached.

It was a mistake to tell Janet.

“So you had a dream,” she said, crunching her toast. She ate it plain, no butter. “So what?”

She was wearing that muscle shirt that made me melt, and her short hair was a mess from sleep. Janet was athletic, butch and pint-sized, and she wore her queerness like a pair of brass knuckles. I was lucky to have her.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seemed so real.”

“I dreamed I was a hockey player,” Janet said, popping the last piece of toast into her mouth. “But I ain’t one.”

“I know.” I stabbed at my breakfast, not feeling all that hungry. “Never mind.”

She came over and kissed the top of my head. “Sorry, babe. I know it bugs you sometimes.” She put her dishes in the sink. “You aren’t gonna start asking about sperm donors or anything, right? Did you freeze yours?”

“No,” I said. “And no. I didn’t.” There’d really been no point. When I had my surgery I’d been in the middle of the divorce with Liz. Kids were out of the question.

“Cool. You gonna be okay?”

I nodded.

“All right. I gotta hit the shower. See you at the game tonight!” She headed off to the shower, humming happily to herself. She usually took half an hour in there, so I’d be long gone by the time she came out. I poked at my scrambled eggs again, then tossed them out.

I couldn’t shake the dream, though, so I went through my day in a fog. People at work asked me if I was all right, and I just shook my head mutely. Sure. Fine, just a little haunted.

I didn’t go directly home that night. Instead, I drove the half hour north to Elm Hill, and parked outside the elementary school. School was long over, though a few kids played on the ball fields and ran around the swings.

I shut the car off and got out. There was a hint of fall in the air, though the leaves hadn’t turned yet. I walked through the playground, passing by my own ghosts on the steps, by the wall, on the baseball field, and up to the fence. There was a little rock there, smaller than I remembered. I sat on it, and thought about Sheldon.

This was silly. It was just a dream. I’d had dreams about motherhood before. Pregnancy, babies, those dreams came with the hormones. Everybody had them, or said they did.

So why wouldn’t this one let me go?

I sighed. Somewhere across the playground, a father with two daughters was watching me. I waved at him, and he turned quickly around again. Dads don’t like me.

Impulsively, I rummaged in my purse and found the little reporter’s notebook I kept handy. I’m not a reporter, I work in layout and design for the magazine, but somewhere along the line I’d picked up a few of their habits.

I pulled a pen out of my purse and started to write.

Hi Sheldon

My hand shook. What was I doing? This was stupid. There was no Sheldon.

But my traitor hand kept writing.

I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you had a nice day. I used to play on this rock when I was little, like you. I hope you have a lot of friends, and that you’re happy.

Your friend,

Sarah

I couldn’t bring myself to sign it ‘Mom.’

My phone chimed, and I pulled it out. There were two texts there. One was from Janet, wondering where I was. Guilty—I’d forgotten her game—I texted her back that I’d be there in about half an hour.

The other was from a number I’d never seen before. It was a weird combination of letters and numbers, and there was no name.

From: AC67843V-D

Hey I can take Sheldon Friday txt me back –D

Angry, I texted back—

Not funny, Janet

—and put the phone away. I folded the paper up and thought about chucking it away. Then I folded it again and stuck it in a little crack in the rock.

Maybe somehow it would find its way to him, wherever he was, and he’d leave me alone.

Janet was a little peeved that I’d missed the start of the game. She took softball seriously, and the fall league was special in some way that I’d tried my best not to understand. But I got there in time for the fourth inning, which meant I got to see her steal third base, so it wasn’t a total loss.

“Where were you?” she asked as we were downing beer and pizza with the team after.

“Just got held up,” I said. “At work. You know how it is.”

“They exploit you,” she said, pointing at me with the business end of a slice of pizza. “You shouldn’t let them do that. It’s cause you’re trans—” I winced. Tell the whole pizza joint, why don’t you? “—that they think they can take advantage, cause you’re desperate for work. You shouldn’t take it.”

“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”

“Damn it, Sarah,” said Janet. “You gotta stick up for yourself! You never do. You just let Liz roll away with your house and car and money, and you let your boss get all kinds of unpaid labor out of you. You need to grow a spine.”

And I let you boss me around, too, I thought, eating a slice of pizza. So what?

“You didn’t have to send me that text,” I said.

“What, I just wanted to know where you were!” she said.

“No, the other one. The Sheldon one? That was mean.”

She blinked. “I never sent you anything about Sheldon. Who’s Sheldon?”

That night I dreamed about driving around the streets of my hometown. The town was different in that way familiar things change in dreams, but I still knew it was Elm Hill.

I took a turn and pulled into the parking lot of a condo complex. “Home, home,” sang a little voice in the seat next to me. I looked over and there was Sheldon, smiling up at me. I got out of the car and walked around to his side, my heels clicking on the pavement. I opened the door and helped him out.

I glanced in the window, and saw reflected back a face that was and wasn’t mine.

I woke up, the feel of Sheldon’s cold little hand in mine burned into my memory.

My mother was no help at all.

“Your sister’s pregnant,” she announced when I called her over lunch.

“Again?” I asked. Patty seemed to get pregnant with alarming regularity. This would be her fourth.

“So she says. I hope it’s a summer baby. They could name her June. Such a pretty name. I wanted to name you June, if you’d been a girl.”

I’m a girl now, I thought, but didn’t say. “The baby would be born earlier than that, right? It’s only September.”

“Well, you never know. And think what an interesting story that would be! ‘This is my daughter June, she was born in May!’ Wouldn’t that be an interesting story?”

“Sure. How’s Dad?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Same as ever,” she grumped, launching into a long story about how he was out with his golf buddies all the time and never home. Not that she wanted him home, of course.

I almost told her about Sheldon. He was still haunting me. But what would I have said?

Instead, I listened as she told me about Dad, passed judgment on the sorry state of my career, and questioned whether Janet was right for me. I made the appropriate noises at the appropriate times, and excused myself to go back to work when the time came.

That evening I found myself pulled back to the parking lot of the elementary school in Elm Hill, looking out over the playground and thinking wistfully of what might have been. Maybe I should find a therapist, I thought. Maybe I should get help.

I got out of the car and strolled across the field, trying not to look guilty. I didn’t see the dad from yesterday. I sat myself back down on the rock, and sighed. The piece of paper was still wedged into that crack.

This is ridiculous, I thought. Why was I even here?

I was lucky. I knew I was. I had a home, a cute girlfriend, and a job. I didn’t get abuse on the streets. I wasn’t young anymore and I was never pretty, but so what?

So what.

Why did I want what I could never, ever have so badly?

Suddenly furious, I ripped the paper out of the wedge in the rock. I was about to tear it to shreds when I noticed that the paper was a soft blue color. My notebook only had white lined.

Curious, I opened it up. There, in a child’s blocky script, was written:

HELLO

I like beinG on the Rock. I make Believe its a SPACE SHIP.

My mommy is nice and a DIKe and is coming to pick me up soon. Do you like Dinosars?

SHELDON

My hands began to shake. This had to be some trick. I turned the paper over, looking for signs, but there was only the name of the paper company on the back. “Bloomfield Paper - Made in the R.N.E.” was stamped next to a little pine tree flag. There was no other mark, nothing to indicate where this had come from.

I got out my pen and paper again, and wrote another note.

Hi Sheldon

I like space ships, and I like dinosaurs. I’m very glad your mommy is nice. I hope you had a nice day today, too.

Sarah

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Before I lost my nerve I wedged the note back into the rock, and left quickly.

I went back to the rock the next day, and sure enough, there was another blue paper stuck in the crack. This time it was a crude picture of a dinosaur, signed by Sheldon.

For Sara, it read, spelling my name wrong.

I smiled, touched, and tried not to think about what a creep I was being to somebody’s poor kid. I tucked the drawing into my purse.

Just then my phone rang, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I checked my phone; it was that same combination of letters and numbers as the text from yesterday had been. AC67843V-D.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying and failing to keep the quavering out of my voice. “I’m not June.”

“What?” The voice on the other end sounded very confused. “Oh. Huh. Wrong number, I guess. You sure you’re… you sound just like her. Weird.”

“I’m Sarah,” I said.

“And you’re on your own phone?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Well, if you see June tell her David can’t pick up Sheldon Friday.”

The line went dead, leaving me shivering in the bright sunny afternoon.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to Janet snore, turning it all over in my mind.

At last I got up and paced, restless and weary at the same time.

I fixed myself a cup of tea and sat in the living room, surrounded by books, stacks of DVDs, my old board games and framed prints of the brassy 40s pin-up girls Janet was obsessed with. The place felt like us, and calmed me down a little.

I took the picture and the note Sheldon had sent me out of my purse, unfolded them, and smoothed them out on the coffee table in front of me.

“He was,” I sighed. “Then he backed out without telling me. He swears now that he did tell me, but I don’t know.”

“Does this have to do with that Janet woman?”

Janet?

“Ma, I told you, I don’t know any Janets.”

“She seemed awfully friendly. Little Xs and Os in her text.” My mother narrowed her eyes in that way she had when she knew something was up. “June, you’re hiding something. Is it true, what David said? That you’re a… you know?”

My mommy is nice and a DIKe, Sheldon had written. What had this David person been telling him?

I drummed my fingers on the counter, stalling, but just then Sheldon came back from wherever he’d been, and we talked about nothing else besides him until I woke up.

“Didn’t sleep at all?” said Janet, taking in my bleary expression that morning.

“Some,” I said, cradling my cup of coffee with my trembling hands. Thank goodness it was Saturday. “I had more dreams.”

Janet sat, not looking at me. “Sarah? If you were in some kind of trouble, or if something was really wrong, you’d tell me, right?”

“I’m not in trouble,” I said quickly. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“But you can’t sleep,” she pressed, still not looking at me. “You’ve been home late. You had those notes from a kid last night. And… you look like you got hit by a truck this morning.” She visibly braced herself, then gave me one of her very serious looks. “What’s going on?”

I thought about coming up with some half-assed excuse. I thought about saying “nothing” again and pretending it was all fine. I thought about being reassuring and hiding my pain like I always did.

But I was so tired and heartsick that I told her everything.

When I was done, Janet just sat there for a few minutes. “Wow,” she said at last.

“I know, I know,” I said, miserable. I felt more exposed sitting there at the table than I ever did when I took off my clothes. “I’m sure there’s explanations. But the phone calls, the way June had my letters to Sheldon in my dream…”

“June?” Suddenly Janet was alert. “Who’s June?”

“Sheldon’s mother.” I shook my head, reaching for an explanation that made sense. “I… I think she’s me, or who I could have been. June is what my mother would have named me, if I’d been born a girl.”

Janet pulled out her phone and paged through it, brow creased.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. “I know this is weird! I just want to have a quiet morning. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

She handed me the phone. “I sent you a text the other day,” she said. “I got this back.”

From: AC88534J-J

I’m not Sarah, who is this? My name is June.

I just stared at it for a moment, shocked. Then I pulled out my own phone and showed her the text from “D,” who I now suspected was David.

“I’ve never seen phone numbers like that,” said Janet. “But they’re similar to one another.”

I started piecing it together in my mind. “Where were you when you got that text, Janet?”

“A contract up in Elm Hill,” said Janet slowly. “Why?”

“That’s where I was when I got the text, and the call,” I said excitedly. “That’s where the school is!”

“But look, it gets even better,” said Janet, taking back the phone and poking the screen. “I got another one a few minutes later.”

From: AC88534J-J

Please don’t tell, but I think I’m gay. I have to tell someone.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“I thought it was someone pranking me at that point,” said Janet as I digested the text, agog. “Like Lisa. She does shit like this, and she knows how to do stuff with phones.” She tapped the phone thoughtfully. “But now… Jesus. Sarah, is this real?”

“It is,” I said firmly. “It has to be.”

“What’s going on?” Janet asked. “Why do you have such a connection with this Sheldon? I mean, he’s not your kid, right?”

“No, not exactly. But June… She’s got my mother, the name I would have had.”

“She’s you,” said Janet. “Or who you would have been, if…”

“Yeah. If.” I said, and an entire world was contained in that world.

“So what do we do about it?” Janet asked.

It was a good question. Our parallel lives were crashing together, I was driving myself nuts from lack of sleep, and all I wanted was everything she had.

This couldn’t go on.

“I want to try to talk to them,” I said.

I spent the whole weekend a wreck, trying not to think about the plan . I had more disjointed dreams about Sheldon and June, enough to know that June was talking with a therapist but couldn’t bring herself to say what she needed to say, and Sheldon was going through a serious dinosaur phase. I stayed far away from Elm Hill until Monday, though, when I drove up in the early morning to deliver a final note.

I got the answer Monday afternoon. They’d be there.

That night I dreamed about June, who was sitting up alone, looking at the notes I’d sent Sheldon, drinking.

Tuesday afternoon came at last. Janet drove us up to Elm Hill; we didn’t say anything the whole way. When we got to the school, I had to sit for long moment, just staring out at the playground.

A light rain had begun to fall, and there were no other children that day. Probably for the best.

At last I steeled myself and got out of the car.

“You’re sure they’ll show?” Janet asked dubiously.

I nodded, clutching Sheldon’s note in my pocket. He’d said they would come. I believed him.

“This is a bad idea,” said Janet, staring dubiously out at the damp playground. “You want to go home? We should go home. I can make dinner. You like my dinners.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I’m going. You can stay here if you want.”

Janet was speechless for a moment. I never stood up to her. But then she got out of the car. “Right behind you,” she said, giving me a little smile.

Together, we marched across the damp grass to the rock.

“So what happens now?” Janet said, crossing her arms and shifting from side to side.

I was about to answer that I didn’t know when sunlight streamed in from somewhere just to my left. I jumped back, and shielded my eyes.

The first form I saw was Sheldon’s. He stood there, holding his grandmother’s hand. She looked shocked as she saw us. She was so like my mother that the lack of recognition in her eyes was awful.

And there… holding Sheldon’s other hand. She was shorter than me by a good six inches, and she had the narrow shoulders and face of my sisters. But she looked a little like me, too. We had the same eyes, the same mouth, the same hair.

“June,” I whispered.

“Are you Sarah?” June said. I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Sarah!” said Sheldon. He waved.

“Hi Sheldon,” I said, voice catching.

June hesitantly reached out a hand toward me, then drew it away again. “Are you… me?”

I nodded again.

“How? I don’t understand. You don’t look like me.”

“No. I was born a boy.”

“Oh?” Her eyes widened. “Oh!” Her eyes fell on Janet. “And you…?”

“Janet,” my girlfriend said. “Hey.”

“And you’re with… her?”

Janet took my hand. I squeezed it, grateful

“Awful,” said June’s mother.

“Hush,” said June shakily.

“Now what?” Janet asked softly.

“Now we resolve things,” I said firmly. I understood it now, the way that June looked at Janet. The text she’d sent: I have to tell someone. We both had something the other one wanted. June had Sheldon, and everything he represented.

And I… I had Janet.

I looked, really looked, at Sheldon, and I felt an ache so bad that I began to cry. Janet put an arm around me, and pulled me close.

I straightened. “June?”

June looked at me, fear plain on her face.

“She’ll be okay,” I said, nodding at her glowering mother. “You can tell her. I told her about me, a few years ago, and she wasn’t thrilled. But… we dealt with it and moved on. You have to, to be happy.”

June shook her head furiously. “You don’t understand.”

“I do,” I insisted, amazed at how calm I suddenly felt. “Better than anyone. You and me… everybody pushes us around. But we’re made of iron underneath. There’s a part of us that won’t bend.”

June looked at me and I saw how helpless she must have felt. I remembered feeling like that… just before I changed my life forever.

“I did it,” I said. Behind June and Sheldon was blue sky and bright sun. “You can, too.”

June turned to her mother. “I’m gay, Mom,” she said softly. “I am. I am.”

June’s mother huffed miserably. “I figured that out, genius. So what? See if I care. You’re still my daughter.”

Chills ran down my spine. So what? my mother had said, all those years ago. See if I care. You’re still my child.

June gave her mother a long, hard hug, then turned to me. She seemed to be standing straighter.

“Iron,” I said.

“Nice job,” said Janet, trying to be charitable.

June laughed. She had this perfect voice; she was so beautiful in all the ways I wasn’t. And she had Sheldon. My heart cracked a little more.

“What I’m saying is… let’s just take it a little at a time. We’ve got time, right? We can have time.” She groaned in frustration. “I’m saying that wrong.”

I slipped an arm around her. “I know what you mean,” I said as we drove south through the rain and back to our lives. “I know just what you mean.”

One time I dreamed I had a son named Sheldon. I could never any sons of my own, or daughters. But I did have Janet, and better, I had myself. I wasn’t like June. I was like me.

It was enough, and then some.

END

"Sarah's Child" was originally published in Strange Horizons in May 2014 and was reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on June 7th with a GlitterShip original.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, making a donation at paypal.me/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

]]>Sarah’s Child
Susan Jane Bigelow
Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.
In my ...

Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

Full transcript after the cut

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 28 for May 24, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow, read by Amanda Ching.

Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine’s “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” issue, and the Lamba Award-winning “The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard,” among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.

Amanda Ching is a freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in Storm Moon Press, Candlemark & Gleam's Alice: (re)Visions, and every bathroom stall on I-80 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. She tweets @cerebralcutlass and blogs at http://amandaching.wordpress.com.

Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

]]>

GlitterShipYesNoEpisode #27: “Just a Little Spice Will Do” by Andrew Wilmothttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-27-just-a-little-spice-will-do-by-andrew-wilmot/
http://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-27-just-a-little-spice-will-do-by-andrew-wilmot/#commentsTue, 10 May 2016 10:05:53 -0400GlitterShiporiginalGlitterShip originalAndrew Wilmotcannibalismheartsrelationshipshttp://GlitterShip.podbean.com/e/episode-27-just-a-little-spice-will-do-by-andrew-wilmot/ Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand [...]

]]> Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back andthe other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Theme music plays.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 27 for May 10th, 2016. The end of the semester hit a little harder than expected, so I ended up shifting the May episodes back a week.

For today, however, I have GlitterShip's second Original story, "Just A Little Spice Will Do" by Andrew Wilmot, with a return by guest reader S. Qiouyi Lu.

ANDREW WILMOT is a writer, editor, and artist living in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the SFU Master in Publishing program and spends his days writing as much as possible and painting stupidly large pieces. His fiction has been published by Found Press, Drive In Tales, The Singularity, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and the story “When I’m Old, When I’m Grey” was the winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Fiction Competition. He works as a freelance reviewer, academic editor, and substantive editor. For more on his work and creative pursuits: http://andrewwilmot.ca/about/cv/

S. Qiouyi Lu 陸秋逸 is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, inkscrawl, and The Cascadia Subduction Zone. In their spare time, they enjoy destroying speculative fiction as a dread member of the queer Asian SFFH illuminati. S. currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with a tiny black cat named Thin Mint. You can visit their site at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter as @sqiouyilu."

Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back and the other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium.

“That’s not possible.” Alex surveyed her heart.Several small wedges had been cut away—battle scars pocking the bruise-coloured surface. The organ beat calmly, like clockwork, like there was absolutely nothing wrong. “Looks just fine to me.”

Lindy thrust a blood- and fatty tissue-coated fork at Alex. “Try it yourself. Go ahead, make a liar out of me.”

“Lindy —”

“Taste it! Then try and tell me everything’s fine.”

Alex relented, accepting the fork. She suspected her heart would taste a little off no matter what, in that way that anything chilled tasted at room temperature. She could feel Lindy staring at the back of her head, wearing her mother’s scowl—the same Alex had seen when, after six months together,they went on a week’s vacation to Johannesburg to meet her parents. Lindy’s mother had taken one look at the pale, freckled Irish girl with the decidedly un-Irish name and told her daughter that she would starve to death on someone with such a sour, unfeeling heart. Lindy was quick to protest, but her mother silenced her as if she were still in primary school. She sniffed the air between them, wafting in then imperceptible scent of their nascent vintage. “There’s poison in you,” she said, at last, to Alex. “You’ll ruin my good girl. You’ll be the death of her.”

Neither spoke afterwards of the incident. Indeed, Alex had very nearly forgotten about it, and likely would have were it not for Lindy standing behind her at that moment, waiting expectantly for her to sample her own disposition.

Alex carved a small triangle from the space above the left ventricle. She put it to her nose, sniffed. She heard Lindy tsk dismissively, as if Alex were admitting complicit behaviour in whatever it was she was being accused of. Not wanting to give her further ammunition, Alex forked the tiny fragment of muscle into her mouth and started to chew. It was tougher than she remembered—a little like biting into a half-inch slab of pickled ginger—but it tasted the same as it ever had, like unsalted ham with a slight metallic aroma.

“It tastes fine,” she said after swallowing. “Like normal.”

Lindyappeared wounded. “I never thought you’d do this to me. I didn’t think you could do this. To me.”

“Love, I don’t—”

“You’re lying!” Lindy shouted. “It tastes rotten, like, like bad eggs, or beef left on a sidewalk in the rain.”

“How would you know what either of those taste like?” Alex said jokingly.

“I’m not!” They were interrupted just then by a sharp thumping against the wall—their neighbours to the west.Alex exhaled, lowered her voice. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Lindy looked away, wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s still so much of it left. I don’t understand how.”

“It’s yours and yours alone. I swear it.”

Lindy shook her head. “I . . . I just don’t know if I . . .”

Alex took her hand. Lindy resisted at first, then let her squeeze, pull her closer. Alex stared at her lovingly. “Everything I am belongs to you.”

In the staff room the next morning, a half hour before the start of first period, Alex went up to Claire, said her hellos, and poured a mug of coffee. Claire was a mid-forty-ish two-time divorcee who taught sixth grade.She took one look at Alex’s heavy-lidded eyes and pulled her to the window for a sidebar.

“You look like shit,” she said once they were out of range of the other teachers.

“Out with it then,” said Claire. Sensing Alex’s reluctance, she added, “I’ve heard it all. There’s nothing you can say that’ll shock me.”

“It’s just . . . my heart. She said it tasted—”

“Bad?”

“Rotten. Like meat left under a radiator for a month.”

“How would she know—?”

“Right?” Alex shook her head. “Anyway, I tried a piece and I didn’t notice anything off about it.”

“Well of course you wouldn’t. You never mind the flavour of your own recipe, dear. Dennis, my first husband, he used to say that every time he passed wind—one man’s sulphur was another’s potpourri.”

Alex knitted her eyebrows together. “Seems a bit reductive.”

“But true nonetheless.”

“I suppose . . .” Alex sipped her coffee and thought back to the quite subtle aftertaste of her heart, like pocket change resting on the back of her tongue.

She remembered what it was like seeing Lindy’s heart for the first time. She presented it early on; it was only their fifth date. Alex recalled it perfectly, how Lindy had run excitedly into the kitchen after they made love for the first time and returned with a ceramic rim bowl hand-painted with concentric rings. She cradled it in both hands as if she feared it would slip from her grip at the slightest breath.

“I’ve not done this before,” Lindy said. “Ever, actually.” She climbed back into bed and raised the bowl between them. The organ smelled dense with images and sounds; a host of thoughts and memories trespassed in Alex’s mind, as if she were viewing a series of home movies from Lindy’s childhood. She shut her eyes and inhaled acutely, allowed the odour of Lindy’s heart to glide down her oesophagus with the ease of crema. She opened her eyes again and saw Lindy holding a knife and fork between her knuckles like a peace sign. Alex took the utensils and Lindy watched — nervously, excitedly —as she cut a small but perfect equilateral triangle from the very centre of the muscular organ. Lindy’s heart beat faster as Alex cut, as she pulled out the piece from the whole, as she placed it slithering, squirming on her tongue and started to chew.She felt her devotion grow with every bite, and when she swallowed, Lindy released a heavenly sigh;when she wiped clean her lips, returning to the moment, Alex saw something new and fearful in Lindy’s eyes: trust.

“You don’t have to give me yours right away,” Lindy was quick to say. “But I’m ready, whenever you are. It’s important you know—you can trust me.”

But Alex hadn’t waited long. It was only their next date when she told Lindy she had a surprise for her. She’d asked her to close her eyes and open her mouth. Lindy did so, stifling whatever anxious thoughts she felt as she waited with her mouth agape like a child at the dentist’s.

Earlier that day, Alex had gone to her parents’ home and taken her heart out of the chest freezer in the garage. It had been buried beneath containers of frozen leftovers; her father hadn’t bothered to clean out the freezer in years—that had been her mother’s job. About the only thing he touched out there were the boxed bottles of their vintage stacked one on top of another.

Alex was careful not to disturb him when retrieving her heart; since her mother’s death, her father drank another pint of their mixed A-O every night, becoming evermore intoxicated by their shared history. When Alex tried to encourage him to go out and meet someone new, he responded by drunkenly throwing a bottle of their third year’s marriage at her, painting the wall behind her with glass-flecked blood.

Back in her apartment, Alex set her heart on the counter to thaw and went to run errands. When she returned home that afternoon, the organ was valve-deep in a pool of watery blood that tasted as flavourless as a movie theatre soda. With only an hour before her date, she quickly carved out a small section of her heart, which she then proceeded to dry and cut into even smaller triangles, each identical to the last in shape and size. Then, upon tasting one of the small pieces and finding it lacking, she whipped up a quick balsamic and extra virgin olive oil glaze, threw the pieces into a salad bowl, and drizzled them lavishly.

That night she sat on the bed with her legs crossed facing Lindy, the lightly dressed pieces of heart marinating in the bowl between them. Lindy sniffed the air suspiciously, crinkled her nose at—Oh, shit, I used too much vinegar, Alex realized. She started to panic, the pieces of heart beginning to hop and bounce in the bowl. She took out a piece—one of the more abundantly coated triangles—and, before she could chicken out, tossed it into Lindy’s waiting mouth.Lindy clamped down to keep the piece of heart from leaping out of her mouth and onto the bedspread. Alex watched, a perfect mix of eagerness and terror, as Lindy chewed, slowly at first, then faster, nodding her head as she worked her way through the leathery, tougher than anticipated meat.

“I-is it all right?” Alex asked.

Lindy opened her eyes. At first Alex was unable to read her expression—she looked a little like an infant relieved to have finished their plate of Brussels sprouts. Then she smiled warmly and hugged Alex, careful not to tip over the bowl between them.

“It was more than all right,” she said at last, kissing the words into Alex’s ear.

“You know,” Claire said, “that bastard cheated on me with the neighbour’s wife no less than three times. Know how I could tell? Each time he tried to surprise me by beating me home from work and firing up the grill. Thought he could slather his leftover gristle in barbeque sauce and seasoning and it wouldn’t still taste like warmed over piss, but let me tell you, that kind of betrayal doesn’t go away, even if you dress it up all pretty. You put a suit and tie on a pig and he’s still going to taste like mud.”

Alex’s face slumped as if it were being pulled down at the seams. “That’s what Lindy thinks. That I’ve cheated on her.”

Alex shrugged shyly. “I don’t really get along with her mother. I’ve tried, it’s just— I’m not what she envisioned, I guess.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if that’s it.”

“Then maybe you just need to, I don’t know, zing things up a bit.”

“Zing?”

“Add a little pizazz to your life.”

“But then she’ll think I’m hiding something.”

“Which she already does . . .”

“But I’m not.”

“Then leave it be. Either she likes your white rice or she doesn’t.”

“But I don’t want her to—”

“For fuck’s sake, ’Lex, just do something.”

Alex thought for a moment. “I saw this delicious looking tamarind chutney the other day at Whole Foods. I bet she’d like that.”

Claire shook her head. “You fucking hipster.”

For two days Lindy ate only salads, occasional handfuls of mixed nuts. When Alex presented her with a small soup bowl filled with several pieces of her heart floating in a sunset curry, she took one sniff and recoiled.

“It smells like, like fish left on the sidewalk in the middle of July.”

Alex took the bowl away, covered it in Saran Wrap and tucked it back inside the fridge right next to the remains of her heart, its missing pieces amounting to no more than 5 or 10 percent of the whole. Next to this, housed in an identical Tupperware container, the remains of Lindy’s heart beat agitatedly— the organ looked like a veined,palatinate chicken breast with its centre ice cream-scooped away. In the middle of the night, when Alex, feeling peckish, attempted to stick a fork in Lindy’s heart, it squirmed and flattened itself against the far end of the plastic as if prodded with a hot poker. She shut the refrigerator door.

They would both go hungry that night.

Alex woke the next morning to clanging glass and metal. She walked down the hall from their bedroom, stopping at the kitchen. The contents of their fridge and freezer, as well as most of their cupboards, had been emptied and piled indiscriminately into the middle of the tile floor. The cupboard beneath the kitchen sink had also been opened, but the lone bottle of their first year’s vintage—still fermenting, bottled only the previous month—remained untouched.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“That whore’s heart!”

“Love, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I—”

“Don’t you swear to me. I know it’s here somewhere. Have you canned it? Is it in a mason jar somewhere with your grandmother’s blueberry jam?”

Lindy held up the Tupperware container with Alex’s heart inside. To Alex it looked as it ever did. “I don’t understand,” she said, exasperated.

“It’s all there! Nothing’s missing—not even the sliver I tried to eat with apiece of toast for breakfast. This heart is whole. It isn’t yours—it can’t be. It . . . it’s a fake.”

As Lindy spoke, Alex noticed her lover’s svelte, partially digested heart leaping wildly, moving its container across the counter as if charged with an electrical current. The blood surrounding it was starting to boil, the stench of solder and copper filling the air.

Alex opened her mouth again to defend herself, but Lindy jumped up and stormed past her before anything could be said. She slammed the bathroom door and Alex heard the shower turn on. She stood there for several seconds staring at the sea of consumables at her feet before she got down to her hands and knees and started putting things back where they belonged.

Nearly finished, she glanced up at Lindy’s heart, which had calmed down considerably. A soft musk rose from it now like morning fog over a farmer’s field.

Quietly, Alex walked down the hall and pushed open the bathroom door. Through the thin, almost transparent shower curtain, Alex could see glimpses of Lindy’s sparkling, melted sugar skin — and her ribs, like long witch fingers travelling beneath her parchment paper flesh, jutted out from beneath her arm, more visible than she remembered them.

Lindy didn’t go to work the next day. When Alex got home,she was as she’d been that morning: prone on the couch as if stricken with a bout of stomach flu. Alex brought her several small samples of heart, each dressed differently than the last:coated with a white wine reduction; tossed with vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil plucked from their windowsill garden; placed delicately atop a saltine and sandwiched by a thick slice of aged white cheddar.To Lindy,each attempt was more repugnant than the last. She tried to push Alex away but could not muster the strength. The more she resisted, the harder Alex implored, until at last Lindy raised herself upright.

“Why aren’t you suffering?” she asked plainly.

“What do you mean?”

Lindy pointed to Alex’s full face, to her rounded shoulders and non-xylophoned chest. “This isn’t hard for you.”

“That’s . . . of course this is hard for me. It’s killing me to see you like this.” Lindy tried once more to push her away but Alex held her bone-thin arm in place. With her free hand she snatched a piece of heart drowning in a mixture of soy and wasabi from one of a dozen small dessert bowls littering the coffee table. She tried to force it past Lindy’s lips. Lindy kept her mouth shut and Alex smeared the salted piece of heart across her pale, flaked lips and chin until it fell to pieces between her fingers, nothing but a wounded streak of brownish blush across her lover’s face.

Lindy fought but could not break free from Alex’s healthy, nourished grip. Alex grabbed a second piece of heart and inserted it into a small space in Lindy’s mouth, inside her cheek, pressing it against her clenched teeth. Lindy spat it back out again, the slab of muscle slapping Alex in the eye. Lindy got up from the couch, stumbled weakly, and then hurried toward the bedroom. She slammed the door, locking Alex out.

Lindy exited the bedroom two hours later to find Alex sleeping in a ball on the sofa. She nudged her awake and sat down next to her. She apologized, said she needed some time to herself, that something wasn’t right and she had to figure out what.

“When I look at your heart,” she said,“when I remember our times together I think . . . there should not be so much of it left.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“And I know what I’ve tasted, Alex. Dear. Love. I know what you taste like. I think I’ve always known, on some level, but somehow now it’s stronger than it was before.”

“I know, I taste like warm sidewalk fish and dead babies and—”

“Lies, Alex. Like lies.”

“This is about your mother. She never liked me.”

“But I did, and that’s what matters.”

“. . . Did?”

Lindy looked away. “You haven’t eaten in just as long. You say you haven’t, anyway, but you’re still so strong.”

“I haven’t, Lindy—Silindile. I haven’t eaten anyone. I promise.”

Lindy stared into her eyes in a way she hadn’t before. Alex found herself wondering if she had noticed the off-colour essence of her heart from the earliest days of their relationship and had simply remained silent. She recalled how Lindy had appeared when first tasting Alex, nodding as if to convince herself this freckled Irish girl with the distinctly non-Irish name could be anything more than another late-night snack or an experimental fusion dish more interesting than it was good. She reached out and touched Alex’s forehead with her index finger.

“I need to be certain, if we’re going to move on. I’d like a taste, please . . . of your brain.”

Alex was taken aback. “My . . . you want what?”

“Your brain,” Lindy reiterated. “Just a slice, a bit off the prefrontal is all I need. I’ll know then, definitively.”

“How could I ever have eaten someone so self-obsessed?” Lindy spat on the ground as if there were residue of Alex still on her tongue.

“I’ve already given you my heart—what more do you want?”

“I want the truth!”

Alex circled around Lindy and went into the kitchen. She retrieved a long butcher’s blade from the wooden block next to the stove and put it to her wrist. “You want more of me?” She raised the knife high and in one smooth, unhesitating motion, lumberjacked her hand off at the wrist. The appendage dead fished to the ground in a filmic spray of crimson. Alex’s face immediately paled as agony and sudden blood loss siphoned her adrenaline. The knife clattered to the ground and she picked up her dismembered hand, waving it in the air like a dead puppet. “How about a finger? I could chop them off one at a time, sauté them knuckle by knuckle like sausage links.”

Lindy scrunched her face, revoltedby the decidedly pedestrian offering. “You’ll give me what you give your friends when I deserve so much more?”

“You already have so much more.”

“But not the best of you.”

No further words were exchanged that night. Lindy took the severed hand and helped wash and bandage the wound.She placed the newly freed appendage in a separate round container and tossed it in the vegetable crisper. She then gave Alex a handful of brightly coloured pills from the bottles she kept behind the vanity mirror in the washroom. They went to bed without so much as a grunt of acknowledgement for all that had happened, backs turned, their hips and feet inches apart as if their bed had been slashed in two. The medicine quickly took effect; Alex’s eyes grew heavy, and soon she felt no pain.

She’d been unconscious for only an hour when she was awoken by a soft pain in her scalp—the sensation of one hair after another being pulled back as if someone had slapped a bandage over top her head and was removing it a millimetre at a time. The annoying tug soon became a fiery tear and Alex opened her eyes—immediately blinded by the blood that had snaked into her eyes from an incision at her hairline. She let out a high-pitched shriek and started furiously wiping away the blood with the palm of her hand. When she was finally able to see again she saw Lindy standing next to her side of the bed brandishing a paring knife in one hand and a small hammer and chisel in the other.

Alex could not find the words for the violation she felt in that moment. Lindy backed away from her, tightening her grip on the utensils in her hands. Forthwith her vacant stomach broke the silence cementing between them, presenting her case — her need — in a way no words ever could. She turned and ran from the bedroom. Alex again opened her mouth — to scream, to call out, to say something — but the pain from her multiple wounds was too much and she passed out.

The following morning, Alex knew immediately something was amiss. She rolled over in bed and saw an empty space beside her. Slowly the fog cleared and she remembered what had transpired. She gingerly touched her forehead; the tips of her fingers discovered small rivers of dried blood leading back to a very fine, one-inch horizontal slice above her left eye. When she looked to her pillow she saw a deep cardinal pond that dried the farther it extended over the surface of the once-white sheathe. An iron weight of panic formed in the pit of her stomach and she glanced out the open bedroom door to the paring knife, hammer, and chisel on the carpet halfway between the bedroom and kitchen.

“Lindy?”

No answer. Alex slowly, dizzily got out of bed. She felt her legs wobble as she entered the kitchen. A roll of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol by the sink were the only indicators of her self-inflicted wound from the night before. Her stomach rumbled fiercely and she opened the fridge, stepping back in shock. Next to the container holding what was left of Lindy’s softly pumping heart, her own looked suddenly weathered and emaciated, like sheets of paper soaked in brine then left in the sun to curl and crack.

Her confusion was quickly usurped by the hunger devouring her insides. She retrieved a fork and knife from the cutlery drawer and, before it could scamper away, stabbed and shaved a thin slab from Lindy’s heart, dashed it with just a bit of salt and pepper before placing the wiggling, soft muscle on her tongue.

Except it wasn’t soft but suddenly hard, firm like the fat encircling a porterhouse.

Except it wasn’t wiggling but beating.

Faster.

Faster still.

Alex spit the piece of Lindy’s heart to the sink, watched as it bass drummed its way into the drain, leaving a thinning slug’s trail of blood as it climaxed, as it heaved, as it breathed a sigh of release.

And it tasted foul, like . . . like French toast made with sour milk and six-month-old eggs.

Or like lies.

Lindy arrived home an hour later. She looked fuller than she had in days, had a glow about her one could only describe as radiant. She put her jacket, which smelled sick with booze and sweat, on the kitchen counter and went into the living room. Alex was waiting for her on the couch. Right away Lindy looked to the bloodied stump where Alex’s right hand had been, and then to the still leaking cut on her forehead.

“It’s no better,” she said.

“No,” Alex agreed. “It’s not.”

Lindy’s chest swelled into a shield. “Well I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

Alex was perplexed; she seemed to be almost gloating. “You could at least act upset. A little — a smidge, maybe.”

Lindy crossed her arms. “You look hungry.”

“You don’t.”

She looked away. “Look, what’s done is done. Now you know how it feels.”

“Yeah, I know how it feels.”

Lindy tightened her stance, pulling her insides into an hourglass. The longer she stared, Alex noticed, the greater her uncertainty scratched its presence onto her face.

Alex reached down, lifted the hand-painted ceramic bowl Lindy had presented to her one year earlier from the floor beneath the coffee table. In the bowl were two slices of heart: hers and Lindy’s. Unseasoned. Uncooked. Raw.

“Taste them—both of them,” Alex said.

“Why?”

“I want you to taste the difference.”

“The different between what?”

“Between you and me. I want you to know the difference between a lie and the truth.”Lindy sneered at the polemic. “So sure of yourself? Then do it. Taste them both and call me a cheat again.”

Lindy glanced away from the offering. Alex stood up, moved as she moved. She held onto the bowl, keeping it in front of Lindy no matter which way she turned. Lindy watched, though she did not want to, as the pieces of her heart beat faster and more frantically until finally she could not take it any longer and she slapped the bowl from Alex’s hand. It struck the wall and shattered,depositing both pieces of heart to the ground with little more than limp insinuation.

Lindy ran into the kitchen and grabbed her coat off the counter. Alex chased after her, but Lindy, as if trapped in a whirlwind, reached beneath the sink and retrieved the Bordeaux of their one year. She raised it in the air. Alex barely had time to duck as Lindy hurled the vintage above her head. It smashed against the drywall, showering Alex’s back and hair with the memories and claret they’d shared. Lindy had already exited the apartment by the time Alex was upright again.

Thirty minutes passed. Alex, accepting that Lindy was not coming back, moved beneath the archway connecting the living room and the kitchen.She stood between the gory Rorschach of their memories dripping from wall to floor and the flopping goldfish fragments of a future that might have been. Feelingincreasingly weak, shecrouched down and startedpicking up the pieces of broken ceramic. Then she noticed her heart, just a piece of the whole amidst the debris, and it seemed suddenly larger than what she’d prepared. Next to it, however, was an aged, calcified piece of something that at one time resembled a delicacy—an intimacy—and she wondered to herself just how wretched it must now taste.

END

"Just a Little Spice Will Do" is copyright Andrew Wilmot, 2016.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on May 24th with "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow.

[Music plays out]

]]> Just a Little Spice Will Do
by Andrew Wilmot
When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her ...

Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back andthe other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium.

Full transcript after the cut.

[Theme music plays.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 27 for May 10th, 2016. The end of the semester hit a little harder than expected, so I ended up shifting the May episodes back a week.

For today, however, I have GlitterShip's second Original story, "Just A Little Spice Will Do" by Andrew Wilmot, with a return by guest reader S. Qiouyi Lu.

ANDREW WILMOT is a writer, editor, and artist living in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the SFU Master in Publishing program and spends his days writing as much as possible and painting stupidly large pieces. His fiction has been published by Found Press, Drive In Tales, The Singularity, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and the story “When I’m Old, When I’m Grey” was the winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Fiction Competition. He works as a freelance reviewer, academic editor, and substantive editor. For more on his work and creative pursuits: http://andrewwilmot.ca/about/cv/

S. Qiouyi Lu 陸秋逸 is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, inkscrawl, and The Cascadia Subduction Zone. In their spare time, they enjoy destroying speculative fiction as a dread member of the queer Asian SFFH illuminati. S. currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with a tiny black cat nam]]>

There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is to wherever we can see it, here, on Earth. So when you think about it, when we see the stars, we are looking back in time. Everything those stars actually shone on has already happened. But just because a story already happened, that doesn’t mean it’s finished.

Full transcript after the cut.

]]>The Face of Heaven So Fine

Kat Howard

There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is to wherever we can see it, here, on Earth. So when you think about it, when we see the stars, we are looking back in time. Everything those stars actually shone on has already happened. But just because a story already happened, that doesn’t mean it’s finished.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 26 for April 19th, 2016. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

It's been a while since GlitterShip last ran flash fiction, so I'm treating you to an episode with three flash stories in it. This episode also marks the return of Bogi Takács, whose fiction previously appeared in GlitterShip episode 3, "This Shall Serve As a Demarcation."

Our first story today is "The Face of Heaven So Fine" by Kat Howard

Kat Howard lives in New Hampshire. Her short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in year's best and best of collections, and performed on NPR. Her debut novel, Roses and Rot, will be out in May from Saga Press. You can find her on twitter at @KatWithSword.

The Face of Heaven So Fine

Kat Howard

There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is to wherever we can see it, here, on Earth. So when you think about it, when we see the stars, we are looking back in time. Everything those stars actually shone on has already happened. But just because a story already happened, that doesn’t mean it’s finished.

Juliet was the bleeding heart of a story, made flesh and made gorgeous. She was all eyeliner and fishnets, the kind of girl who looked like she’d carve designs on her own skin, not because she was trying to hurt herself, but just for the beauty of it, you know?

It wasn’t ever herself that Juliet cut, though. It was her lovers. All of them. That was the deal. A fuck, and then a perfect star, cut out of their skin.

The scars were like a badge of honor. Proof you’d been with her. People would ask her to put them some place visible, those little stars she cut out of people, but Juliet chose. Juliet always chose.

I fell in love with Juliet the first time I met her, which doesn’t make me any different from anyone else. I know that. That’s just how it was with Juliet. If you fell in love with her, it was an instant, headlong crash.

I don’t think she fell in love back. It didn’t matter. She was like a star – so bright that everything else seemed dim when she walked into the room. It was enough to be in her orbit.

I met her for the first time at a party. I knew who she was. Everyone knew who Juliet was. She was a love story with a knife, and a tattoo of an apothecary’s vial.

But when we met, I was dancing, and some guy bumped into me, and I tripped. When I put my hands out to catch myself, it was her shoulders that they landed on.

We danced until I could taste her sweat mixed with mine, until I wasn’t sure whether the ache in my thighs was from exhaustion or desire. We danced until I saw stars, her hand under my shirt, tracing a constellation on my skin.

Because of the distances between the stars and the Earth, some of the stars we see in the sky have already died, burnt themselves out. Some people think that’s sad, that we look up and see things that aren’t there anymore. I think it’s beautiful. It’s like, because we can still see them, in a way they’re still alive.

After, when her fingers were still inside me, her head resting on my chest, I asked: “What do you do with the stars?”

Juliet was silent long enough that I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, “There was a boy, and I loved him. It was the kind of love people write poetry and songs about.

“He burned brighter than the stars, and then he died. And I didn’t. I thought I would, but I didn’t.”

She climbed from the bed, and looked out the window. “I promised I would cut him out, and hang him in the heavens. That way, everyone can see him, and when they do, they’ll know he was worth everything.”

Juliet cut the star from the skin on my chest, right over my heart. She used a dagger. “It was his,” she said when I asked.

It hurt. Of course it hurt. The star of skin was the least of what she was cutting out of me.

I had never wondered before how it was that people fell out of love with Juliet.

The scar healed cleanly. Not just cleanly, but perfectly, a star shining on my skin.

I look for him in the sky. That boy that Juliet loved so much that she would change the face of heaven for him. I don’t know how long it takes the light from those stars, the ones that she hangs, to reach us here, but I know that it will.

I wonder if light reaches back in time, too. Maybe it’s impossible, but a lot of things are, and they happen anyway. I see the stars, and I wonder if that boy ever looked up at the sky and knew how much Juliet loved him. The kind of love people write songs and poetry about. The kind of love that is written in the stars.

END

Our next story is "A Thing with Teeth" by Nino Cipri

Nino Cipri is a queer and genderqueer writer living in Chicago. Their writing has been published in Tor.com, Fireside Fiction, Podcastle , Daily Science Fiction, and other fine publications. A multidisciplinary artist, Nino has also written plays, essays, and radio features, and has performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer. They currently work as a bicycle mechanic, freelance writer, and occasional rabblerouser.

A Thing with Teeth

by Nino Cipri

She started with Elena’s books. Sylvia tore out the blank back pages first, then the title pages, the dedications. Finally, the words themselves, the brittle pages of the story. She tore them into strips, sucked on them until they were soft, chewed them into balls and swallowed them.

Sylvia thought she could detect hidden tastes on the pages. The worn copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon that Elena had kept since childhood was faintly sweet, like store-bought bread. The sex guide tasted coppery, and Elena’s journals had a hint of fake cherry, like cough drops. The books of poetry were minty, but with a bitter aftertaste.

Elena’s letters were next. Torn into pieces, swallowed, hidden in the cavern below her throat. Sylvia could taste the dust on them, the fine desert sand that Elena said got into everything. She could taste gun oil, the military-issue soap, the hand-lotion that Sylvia had mailed across continents and oceans. She'd imagined Elena running into her dry, chapped knuckles when she'd packed it up.

This stuff is worth its weight in gold around here, Elena had written. You’re a goddess.

I miss you.

I miss you.

I miss you.

The words echoed in the empty part of Sylvia’s chest. Her stomach felt like an empty house, filled with dust and ghosts.

She swallowed the death notification from the Army, and then the letter from Elena’s commanding officer. It included all the details that the official notification had left out, typed out in unadorned English: the ambush, the ground-to-air missiles, the crash, the fire.

We couldn’t recover her remains from the wreck, he wrote. I’m sorry. It’s likely that she died from her wounds, and not the fire. She probably went quick.

Sylvia thought again of Elena’s hands. Had she worn that lotion that day? Had she smelled its perfume before she died?

Sylvia tore the letter into strips and let it dissolve on her tongue.

If hope was a thing with feathers, what was grief?

When the books and letters were gone, she ate their photos, the black-and-white strips from photo booths, the matte prints from their civil union, the out-of-focus pictures from their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. Still hungry, she started on Elena’s clothes next, the T-shirts with the ironic slogans, the cotton briefs, the lacy bras she rarely wore. Sylvia ate the sheets off their bed, both their bathrobes, a washcloth, a slipper. She ate Elena’s pocketbook. It took her four days and a heavy kitchen knife to finish off a pair of old hiking boots, chewing and chewing and chewing.

All that and she still felt hollow, carved open like a canyon.

Sylvia stood at the mirror with her aching jaw held open, peering into the inside of her own mouth. She half-expected to see words imprinted on the red skin of her throat, black letters crawling towards the tip of her tongue. Her breath fogged the mirror.

When Sylvia spat, there were threads of blood in the saliva, mixed with something darker. Ink, maybe.

Sylvia walked out of her house in her pajamas, into the cold, damp air. She ran her fingers over the bark of the oak tree that dominated the backyard, then knelt down on the grass and stared up at the sky through the branches, at the chalky moon, the glassy stars.

She stared at her hands, the bitten nails and torn cuticles, knuckles dry and chapped. She pressed her fingertips to the cool, damp ground at the foot of the oak tree. It parted easily, and she came up with two small handfuls of dirt. Hesitantly, she put one in her mouth, pouring it past her lips. She worked it around her tongue, and then swallowed it.

Sylvia worked quickly after that, digging her fingers into the damp sod. She clawed up chunks of the ground, shoving handful after handful into her mouth. By dawn, she’d swallowed enough dirt to fill a grave. She lay back, her hands caked with soil to her elbow, belly distended, lips and chin black with soil.

Finally, she thought. I’m full.

END

And, our final story is "Increasing Police Visibility" by Bogi Takács.

E has an upcoming novelette in GigaNotoSaurus and a story in Defying Doomsday, an anthology of apocalypse-survival fiction with a focus on disabled characters, edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench.

E also recently guest-edited an issue of inkscrawl, the magazine for minimalist speculative poetry.

Manned detector gates will be installed at border crossings, including Ferihegy Airport, and at major pedestrian thoroughfares in Budapest. No illegally present extraterrestrial will evade detection, government spokesperson Júlia Berenyi claimed at today's press conference...

Kari scribbles wildly in a pocket notebook. How to explain? It's impossible to explain anything to government bureaucrats, let alone science.

Kari decides even this is too complicated, tears out the page, starts over.

To describe a measurement—

Janó grits his teeth, fingers the pistol in its holster. The man in front of him is on the verge of tears, but who knows when suffering will turn into assault, without another outlet.

“I have to charge you with the use of forged documents,” Janó says.

“How many times do I have to say? I'm – not – an – alien,” the man yells and raises his hands, more in desperation than in preparation to attack.

“Assault on police officers in the line of duty carries an additional penalty,” Janó says.

The man breaks down crying.

Kari paces the small office, practices the presentation. They will not understand because they don't want to understand, e thinks. Out loud, e says:

“To describe any kind of measurement, statisticians have devised two metrics we're going to use. Sensitivity shows us how good the measurement is at finding true positives. In this situation, a person identified as an ET who is genuinely an ET.”

The term ET still makes em think of the Spielberg movie from eir childhood. E sighs and goes on. “Whereas specificity shows us how good the measurement is at finding true negatives.” How much repetition is too much? “Here, a person identified as an Earth human who's really an Earth human.”

The whole thing is just about keeping the police busy and visible. Elections are coming next year, Kari thinks. Right-wing voters eat up this authoritarian nonsense.

“So if we know the values of sensitivity and specificity, and know how frequent are ETs in our population, we can calculate a lot. We can determine how likely it is for a person who was detected at a gate to be a real extraterrestrial.”

Alien is a slur, e reminds emself.

Eir officemate comes in, banging the door open. He glances at eir slide and yells. “Are they still nagging you with that alien crap?”

The young, curly-haired woman is wearing an ankle-length skirt and glaring down at Janó — she must be at least twenty centimeters taller than him, he estimates. She is the seventh person that day who objects to a full-body scan.

“This goes against my religious observance,” she says, nodding and grimacing. “I request a pat-down by a female officer.” She sounds practiced at this.

“Sue the state, you're welcome,” he groans and pushes her through, disgusted with himself all the while.

Kari is giving the presentation to a roomful of government bureaucrats. E's trying to put on a magician's airs. Pull the rabbit out of the hat with a flourish.

“So let's see! No measurement is perfect. How good do you think your gates are at detecting ETs? Ninety percent? Ninety-five percent? You know what, let's make it ninety-nine percent just for the sake of our argument.” They would probably be happy with eighty, e thinks.

E scribbles on the whiteboard – they couldn't get the office smartboard working, nor the projector. Eir marker squeaks.

“So for a person who tests as an ET, the probability that they truly are an ET can be calculated with Bayes' theorem...” E fills the whiteboard with eir energetic scrawl.

E pauses once finished. The calculations are relatively easy to follow, but e hopes even those who did not pay attention can interpret the result.

Someone in the back hisses, bites back a curse. Some people whisper.

“Yes, it's around 33 percent,” Kari says. “In this scenario, two thirds of people who test as ETs will be Earth humans. And this gets even worse the rarer the ETs are.” And the worse your sensitivity and specificity, e thinks but doesn't add. E isn't here to slam the detection gate technology. “This, by the way, is why general-population terrorist screenings after 9/11 were such abysmal failures.” Americans are a safe target here; the current crop of apparatchiks is pro-Russian.

This is math. There is nothing to argue with here. Some of the men still try.

Kari spends over an hour on discussion, eir perkiness already worn off by the half-hour mark.

Below their second-story window, on Klauzál Square, an extraterrestrial materializes out of thin air, dodging the gates.

_____________

Endnotes:

For those interested in the actual calculations, the Bayes' Theorem page on Wikipedia demonstrates them with the numbers used in the story, in the context of drug testing.

I first heard the terrorism comparison from Prof. Floyd Webster Rudmin at the University of Tromsø, Norway.

END

"The Face of Heaven So Fine" was originally published in the February 2013 issue of Apex Magazine.

"A Thing with Teeth" was originally published in Eunoia Review in 2013.

"Increasing Police Visibility" was originally published in the June 2015 issue of Lightspeed: Queers Destroy Science Fiction.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I'll be back on May 3rd with a GlitterShip original.

[Music Plays Out]

]]>The Face of Heaven So Fine
Kat Howard
There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is ...

The Face of Heaven So Fine

Kat Howard

There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is to wherever we can see it, here, on Earth. So when you think about it, when we see the stars, we are looking back in time. Everything those stars actually shone on has already happened. But just because a story already happened, that doesn’t mean it’s finished.

Full transcript after the cut.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 26 for April 19th, 2016. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

It's been a while since GlitterShip last ran flash fiction, so I'm treating you to an episode with three flash stories in it. This episode also marks the return of Bogi Takács, whose fiction previously appeared in GlitterShip episode 3, "This Shall Serve As a Demarcation."

Our first story today is "The Face of Heaven So Fine" by Kat Howard

Kat Howard lives in New Hampshire. Her short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in year's best and best of collections, and performed on NPR. Her debut novel, Roses and Rot, will be out in May from Saga Press. You can find her on twitter at @KatWithSword.

The Face of Heaven So Fine

Kat Howard

There is an entire history in the stars. Light takes time to travel, to get from wherever the star is to wherever we can see it, here, on Earth. So when you think about it, when we see the stars, we are looking back in time. Everything those stars actually shone on has already happened. But just because a story already happened, that doesn’t mean it’s finished.

Orin did not know the feel of gold. There was none to be found in his father’s mill. There were coins of tangy, sharp copper and rough iron fittings on the door, slick steel for the horses’ tack and clattering tin plates for the table. His sister had a silver ring that had belonged to their mother. It was smooth and cool as a night breeze on Jessa’s delicate finger when she held his hand, warm against his skin where it now sat. But none of those things were gold.

]]>
Straw and Gold

By Kate O’Connor

Orin did not know the feel of gold. There was none to be found in his father’s mill. There were coins of tangy, sharp copper and rough iron fittings on the door, slick steel for the horses’ tack and clattering tin plates for the table. His sister had a silver ring that had belonged to their mother. It was smooth and cool as a night breeze on Jessa’s delicate finger when she held his hand, warm against his skin where it now sat. But none of those things were gold.

The padded stool underneath him was by far the most comfortable piece of furniture he had ever sat upon. The king was a clever man. Fear and wealth could drive a person to incredible feats. He clearly thought to give a bit of both to the woman who might live up to her father’s boasting, even if he thought her father a liar. Magic was rare – and it meant power. Orin tugged at the veil that covered his short hair then ran his fingertips over the wood of the spinning wheel. The finely-sanded surface was slick with polish.

Full transcipt after the cut.

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 25 for April 5, 2016. This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you!

Today is a big day for two reasons! First, it's the first episode of our second year! Happy first birthday to GlitterShip! Also, our story today is GlitterShip's first original short story. "Straw and Gold" by Kate O'Connor has never been published anywhere else in either print or audio. Going forward, GlitterShip will bring you one original and one reprint episode per month!

Also, if you are planning to attend Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin, May 27th to May 30th this year, there will be a live GlitterShip reading featuring a few of the authors who have previously appeared on this show. More information will be in listed on the convention schedule when we get nearer to the event.

On a serious note: if you live in the United States, you have probably seen the large number of bigoted, anti-trans bills being proposed in state legislatures. Although I don't want to spend too much time talking politics on this podcast, I do want to urge any American listeners to take a look at their local politics. If your state house is trying to pass laws that legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people, or criminalize trans people just for existing, please contact your representatives to speak out against bigotry. For those of you who have done so already, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

And now, on to what you're here for!

After graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Kate O'Connor took up writing science fiction and fantasy. Her short fiction has most recently appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, StarShipSofa, and Escape Pod. In between telling stories, she flies airplanes, digs up artifacts, and manages a dog kennel.

Straw and Gold

By Kate O’Connor

Orin did not know the feel of gold. There was none to be found in his father’s mill. There were coins of tangy, sharp copper and rough iron fittings on the door, slick steel for the horses’ tack and clattering tin plates for the table. His sister had a silver ring that had belonged to their mother. It was smooth and cool as a night breeze on Jessa’s delicate finger when she held his hand, warm against his skin where it now sat. But none of those things were gold.

The padded stool underneath him was by far the most comfortable piece of furniture he had ever sat upon. The king was a clever man. Fear and wealth could drive a person to incredible feats. He clearly thought to give a bit of both to the woman who might live up to her father’s boasting, even if he thought her father a liar. Magic was rare – and it meant power. Orin tugged at the veil that covered his short hair then ran his fingertips over the wood of the spinning wheel. The finely-sanded surface was slick with polish.

The dusty, dry smell of clean straw filled the air to bursting. Even his father’s barn wasn’t as fragrant. He reached down, feeling around him until his hand encountered the nearest pile. He plucked out a few pieces and rolled them between thumb and forefinger. The harsh stalks rustled and poked.

For a moment, Orin hated his father. It was bad enough that he had gone begging to the king, but even worse that he had told lies when a courtier had mocked him for his poverty. That kind of pride was a luxury their small family had no room to claim. But what was done was done.

The king’s men came while Orin sat carding wool, banging on the door with metal-clad fists and demanding the girl who spun straw into gold.

Orin felt Jessa trembling beside him as their father explained what he had done. Father’s voice had been quiet and desperate. He hadn’t expected the king to call him out on his lie. He had just wanted to be heard without scorn.

“I don’t know how.” Jessa’s voice, more familiar to Orin than his own, was a whisper. Even if the king had only wanted plain yarn, she couldn’t have given it to him. Spinning was Orin’s job. Blind as he was, he couldn’t work the mill, but he spun the smoothest, finest thread in the village. It was all in the touch and the way whatever material he spun came together. No matter how poor the quality, he could make the fibers turn right under his hands.

“We don’t have magic. No one does.” Anger flickered in Jessa’s voice, driven by her fear. “It’s treason to lie to the king.” Orin felt her shivers as if they were his own. The punishments for treason were harsh and they had never so much as met anyone who could do magic.

Orin took his twin’s hand in his. “I’ll go.” He was the one they could spare. Jessa helped their father with the mill. She was part of the little world that was their village. Orin was nothing -- a damaged, near-silent young man who was little help to anyone. Maybe if he explained, the king would forgive them. It would be a disgrace if the task couldn’t be done, but it meant nothing in the greater scheme of things if Orin was shamed.

He could feel their attention on him. “Give me a dress and put a veil over my hair.” Orin spoke with far more calm than he felt. The people who came to the house always remarked that the twins could pass for one another but for their sex. Jessa was strong and her shoulders broader than Orin’s from her work in the mill. Life indoors had left his skin smoother than that of the village children.

“You can’t do this.” Jessa’s braid brushed his arm as she shook her head. “The king will be angry with you.” She sounded angry and commanding, like she did when someone spoke ill of him or their father.

He smiled, reaching out until he found her face. He patted her cheek gently. She had always been his defender. “My turn, Jess. Get your church clothes. You’ll have to help me dress.” This time, he would protect her.

Orin wished he had thought to ask for water to soften the straw. It was a silly desire. Even with the proper tools and enough time to work the straw into spinnable fibers, it would still just be straw, and, come morning, he would be dead. The king had been quite clear, his voice viper soft as he breathed the words in Orin’s ear like a lover. If the task could not be completed, the miller’s daughter would die.

Orin turned Jessa’s ring on his finger. He was grateful for its presence, even though it most likely meant she wouldn’t get it back after. The ring was a little piece of her -- and of their mother. It hadn’t crossed his mind until the king had spoken that death would be his punishment. Banishment, servitude, imprisonment, those had all seemed possible, but not death.

He twisted the straw into a bundle. His hands were shaking again. He didn’t want to die. He had wasted who-knew how long trailing his fingers along the walls of the room when he had first been locked in. The walls were solid stone under his desperate hands. There were no windows to move the stagnant air, no doors but the one they had escorted him through and shut behind him, no other way out that he could think to search for.

Orin tried to imagine what gold would feel like. Warmer than the silver ring, he thought, softer than iron, smoother than tin. His fingers moved over the bundle, twisting and pulling. What was it about gold that made people want it so? It must be more than cold metal.

Jessa said it was the color of sunlight and corn. He imagined the warmth of the sun on his face, the heat of the earth after a long summer day, the dusty-sweet scent of the mill. For a moment, the memories were so strong he could feel them. The straw pulled together, fibers working free and warming under his hand.

Out of habit, he spun them onto the wheel, hands following motions made familiar as breathing by practice and loneliness. The thread felt strange and stiff. His fingers tingled. Startled, he stopped, shaking his head to clear it. He felt the thread where it wound around the bobbin. It didn’t feel like straw, but it wasn’t metal either. Heart in his throat, he gathered up more straw. He started to spin again, trying to imitate exactly what he had done before. The straw fell to bits. He kept at it, over and over until he was exhausted and shivering in the chill damp of the cell.

He couldn’t make it happen again. Orin let his head fall forward into his hands, tears wetting his cheeks. For a foolish moment, he had let himself believe it was possible, that he had found the magic that would save his life.

“Well now. This is interesting.” A warm, musical voice filled the room.

“Who’s there?” Orin’s head jerked up, cocking to one side as he listened intently for the location of his unexpected visitor. He wondered if he had dozed off. He hadn’t heard the door open.

“Why are you crying, miller’s son?” The voice came from the far side of the room, light and easy as a summer breeze.

“The king will kill me if I don’t spin this straw into gold.” It sounded so stupid when he said it aloud. How could anyone be expected to do such a thing? How could his father have imagined the king would believe such a blatant lie?

The man laughed. It was the laugh that told Orin his visitor wasn’t human. It was wild and unrestrained, almost painful to hear. He shrunk away from the creature, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. “And how did he come to believe a boy like you could do that?”

“My father told him my sister could.” The words felt like they were being pulled out of him. He didn’t usually talk easily, let alone to strangers.

Orin heard the man moving, striding through whispering piles of straw. He flinched away. “I’m not going to hurt you.” The other sounded annoyed, but Orin believed him. There was something solid about his voice, as though lying was beneath him.

Orin felt the heat of him as he knelt beside the wheel. Like sunlight. The wheel creaked as the creature spun it. There was an intake of breath that sounded almost surprised.

“It’s not gold.” The voice had shifted, amusement draining into intense interest. “No. Not gold at all. But something.”

“What do you mean?” Orin’s voice cracked, the fear twisting his stomach, reaching up into his throat.

“It doesn’t matter.” A rush of air as the man stood. “I can help you with your impossible task, if you want. For a price.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“I just told you I can spin straw into gold. Do you really think I need money, boy?”

Orin felt like his cheeks were on fire. He dropped his head again. “What, then?” he whispered.

“Something important. Something worth your life.”

Orin thought frantically. He had nothing, was nothing. His fingers twined nervously together in his lap, encountering a slim band of metal. He stopped and sat up straight again. Slowly, he pulled the little silver ring off of his finger. “Here. What about this?” It would hurt to lose it, hurt worse when he had to explain to Jessa that it was gone. It was all they had of their mother.

“Yes.” The stranger breathed, coming close. “That and the thread you spun earlier will do nicely.” The fingers that took the ring from Orin’s hand were deft and gentle. “Do we have a deal?”

Orin shut his blind eyes, a faint smile tugging at his lips. His visitor seemed far more approachable when he was exasperated. He jumped when the man’s hands settled over his. They were calloused and well-formed. Not a farmer’s hands, nor a miller’s, but not soft like a child’s either.

“Here.” He turned Orin’s left hand over, setting something cool and hard on his palm.

“What is it?” Orin turned it over in his hand. It felt like a coin, smooth and simple.

“Gold.”

“But…” Orin traced the small object over and over, trying to sort out what made it so valuable. “It just feels like any metal. A little softer than silver, but just as cold.”

“Exactly.” There was a smile in the man’s voice now. He took the coin and handed Orin a bundle of straw. His hands guided Orin’s to the spinning wheel. His chest was warm and solid against Orin’s back, driving the chill of the room away. “Let me show you the trick of it.”

“How did you do it?” Jessa sounded wary. Orin didn’t blame her. Magic had no place in their lives. She sat on the bed next to him. The foot of distance between them felt like the moment before a missed step sent him tumbling. Their father hadn’t said a word to him since the king’s men had escorted him back home, treating him with care and awed respect.

“There was a man. He helped me.” Orin was half convinced it had been a dream. But a dream didn’t explain what had happened. The king had come with the dawn, a single guard with him. Orin had heard him through the door, his voice tired and resigned as he told the guard the woman would most likely need to be taken to the executioner. Then door had opened and all talk had ceased. King and guard both had barely breathed as they circled the room.

“You made a deal with a fairy?” Jessa’s voice was shocked. It went against every story they had been told growing up. A fairy’s bargain was a double-edged sword.

“Just for the ring.” He didn’t tell her about the strange thread he had woven before the fairy had arrived. It was too odd and she was already treating him like he’d done something frightening. “I’m sorry, Jess. I didn’t know what else to do.”

The bed shifted and she hugged him tightly. “I’m just glad you’re home.” Her voice was muffled and thick with tears. He was surprised. Jessa never cried. “Be careful.” She said, holding him so tightly it hurt. “Be really, really careful. They can be monsters.”

“I will be.” Orin promised. He doubted he would ever see the man again anyway. The thought hurt more than he cared to admit. “Besides, there are good fairies as well as bad. I would have died if he hadn’t interfered.”

A week later, the king’s men came again.

“You won’t trick me twice.” The king said, though there was a question in his voice. “And if you prove incapable of repeating your accomplishment, the punishment will be the same.”

Frightened, Orin felt out every corner of the room he had been locked in. It was easily twice the size of the first and piled high with straw. Even if it had been filled with nothing more than wool, his fingers would have bled before it was all spun. He sank onto the stool, shocked into numbness. It wasn’t fair. He pulled up handfuls of straw and gathered them together. He would have to do his best and hope it was enough.

The night passed too quickly. It had taken him a good hour to remember the trick of it, but the thread had finally shifted and come together. As he had predicted, his fingers split and bled. The thread turned slick and slipped off of the wheel more often than not.

The first frustrated tears had long since dried on Orin’s cheeks. He slipped from despair to frantic hope and back again. His hands ached terribly as he spun. He didn’t know how much longer he had, but he knew it wasn’t long enough. He had managed less than a third of the work. He was so tired.

“This won’t do.” Anger rumbled in the fairy’s voice.

Orin jumped, dropping the blood-covered thread. He reached for it, finding it again and setting it back to the wheel. He couldn’t afford to lose any time.

“I’m sorry.” Orin whispered. Was the man mad at him for spinning gold without his permission? They hadn’t talked about that. Orin had assumed the lesson was his to use.

Orin sat still as his hands were turned over and examined. The small kindness nearly brought him to tears again.

“All of this in one night.” It didn’t seem like a question, so Orin stayed quiet. “And you barely more than a child.”

“I’m not a child.” Even to himself Orin sounded defeated. Had he had his sight, he would probably be considering a house and family of his own by now. He would never be a man like the king, proud and strong and whole, but he had done his best to protect his family and help where he could. He wouldn’t take the blame for a task that was beyond anyone.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” The fairy laid a hand on Orin’s head, brushing his hair back out of his face. “You are a treasure and they treat you cruelly. It makes me angry.”

“A blind man is valuable to no-one.” The bitterness that always lingered under the surface crept out. He had been a burden his whole life. Jessa was kind about it. Father mostly ignored him. But it was a hard, cold fact that their lives were harder because they had to care for him.

“Eyesight has nothing to do with it.” The man’s voice was sharp. “You have a mind for magic. It’s rare enough among my kind. Even more so with yours. Such a gift should be protected and cherished. But enough of this. You need help.”

“What do you want this time?” Orin had nothing left. Kind words or no, he didn’t think the fairy would work for free.

“Ten drops of blood.” There was amusement in his voice. “One from each of your fingertips, so I will know next time you land yourself in such trouble.”

Mutely, Orin held out his hands. It was a small thing, really, and it warmed him that the fairy cared to know how he was fairing.

Orin was not surprised when the king’s men returned a third time, though he hadn’t expected the king himself to come with them.

“Once more.” The king said, kissing the back of Jessa’s hand. “Do this for me one more time and I will marry you.”

Orin was glad he had been inside when the royal procession arrived. His hands were heavily bandaged. The sight of him would lead to too many questions. Jessa was good at playing blind. She had watched him their whole lives. She knew what to do, but if the king saw them together, it would be very clear that something was amiss. He was not a stupid man.

Jessa joined him a moment later, catching him by the elbow and leading him back to her room. He followed without a word.

“You’re not going this time.” Her voice was firm. “You couldn’t spin if you wanted to. I’m going to have to go and hope your friend shows up.”

“I can’t promise that he will.” Orin’s jaw clenched tight. He was helpless again. The king had already seen Jessa uninjured and strong. And she was right about his hands.

“I know.” She sighed. “Just once more and then we’re out of this for good. And everything else besides. I’ll find something to trade him. We’ll be safe and fed and comfortable for the rest of our lives.”

Orin hadn’t known she wanted to be queen. He wouldn’t have thought an offer like that would appeal to her, but he could hear the excitement in her voice. He supposed he understood. Hadn’t he already seen how power could change one’s life?

Orin didn’t sleep that night. He waited in his chair by the hearth until morning, wishing as hard as he knew how that the fairy would help his twin. At long last, the door opened and his sister was home.

“Your fairy did it. All of it. He said I could learn to do it myself if he had a week to teach me and I stopped talking at him.” Jessa was tired, but triumphant. “It’s done.”

Orin closed his eyes, relief making him weak. “What did you give him?”

“Nothing I’ll have to worry about any time soon.” She squeezed his shoulder fondly. “Now hush. I have to pack. We’re moving to the castle.”

“I can’t. The king will know.”

“I told him my blindness was cured when he kissed me.” Jessa laughed. “At this point, I think he’ll believe anything I tell him. He has a ballroom full of gold as proof.”

“I’m staying here.” He would get lost in the palace. “Don’t worry, Jess. Once my hands are better, I’ll spin for my supper. I’ll be happier here. Take Father. I’ve had enough of the palace to last me a lifetime.” He was ready to have his own life, to prove he could take care of himself without burdening them.

If he could learn to spin straw into gold, there was no telling what else he might be able to do given enough time to experiment. He could find his fairy again and maybe this time they would have the chance to talk. There was so much Orin hadn’t thought to ask while the man was saving his life.

Jessa hadn’t been home once in the year since she had wed the king. She sent her people to buy the thread he spun and made sure he was supplied with wool from the castle flocks. He was fast gaining a reputation for spinning the finest thread in the kingdom.

The late-night knock on the door was furtive and unusual. People visited him to buy and trade, nothing else. Orin got to his feet slowly. It was easier to make his way through the house now that he was the only one in it. Everything stayed where he left it.

“Orin. It’s Jessa. Let me in.”

As though he would have forgotten her voice. She was the king’s wife, but she was still his sister. He opened the door.

She threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his neck. He stumbled under the unexpected weight. She sobbed until he thought she would break.

“What’s wrong?” He asked once she had calmed a little. The shoulder of his tunic was damp. “Is it the baby?” Jessa’s son would be two months old. Orin had yet to meet him. The king didn’t approve of his wife wandering about the countryside to visit old friends. Orin didn’t think Jessa had told her husband she even had a brother.

“Yes. No. Sort of.” She paused, and took a shaking breath. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I don’t know what to do. I have three days. Just three days before he comes back.”

“Before who comes back? You’re not making much sense.”

“Your fairy.” Her voice was angry now and she pushed away from him. “He wants my son. And because I was an ignorant, grasping little girl, he has the right.”

“You promised him your child.” Orin couldn’t quite believe it. How could she have offered something like that? Her own flesh and blood.

“Don’t say it. I know.” For a moment, she sounded like a queen, imperious and cold. “I begged him. I offered him anything, anything but my son.”

“There’s nothing I can do. I haven’t seen him since that night.” And Orin had missed the man, strong hands, wild voice, short temper and all. Though he had searched in his own way, asking anyone who came for thread and wool, no amount of wishing had brought the fairy back to him when Orin didn’t actually need his help.

“He said if I learned his name he would release me from our bargain. Do you know it?”

Orin shook his head. “I never asked.” The fairy had done so much for him and he hadn’t thought to ask so much as his name. The chair creaked as Jessa sank into it. “I have people out looking. They followed him as far as the forest. Beyond that, who knows?” She was silent for a long time. Orin stood beside her, the distance between them palpable. “I can’t lose my baby.” She whispered.

“I’ll go.” Just like the first time, the words slipped out before he knew what he was going to say. For this, the fairy would find him. He had come every time Orin had needed him.

Jessa hugged him, the space between them evaporating like it had never been there. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” He would have to go into the forest alone. There was no point in hoping the fairy would come if he brought a guide.

Jessa’s men dropped him off at the edge of the forest. He followed the cart track a long way into its rustling, whispering depths, shuffling along slowly. He rubbed his fingertips, hoping that he was right and ten drops of blood taken more than a year ago would be enough to get him out of the mess he was walking deeper into.

After a while, Orin lost track of the path. He was hopelessly turned around. He pushed on, not sure if he should call out or be silent. He opted for silence. The fairy had always found him well enough before without him yelling.

He stumbled and fell over a tree root. Something smooth and cool brushed against his arm, coiling and alive. He jerked back, desperately hoping the creature wasn’t poisonous.

“You do get yourself into the most interesting sorts of trouble.” The familiar laughing voice came from the trees above him. “Stay still. I’ll send the snake away.”

Orin shivered. In no time, the fairy was beside him, helping him to his feet and brushing the crinkling leaves off of his clothing.

The tight knot in Orin’s stomach loosened. He had found him. Whatever else happened, he wouldn’t be left wandering the woods until he starved or ran afoul of something less pleasant.

“Let me look at you.” He was turned gently from side to side. “Hmm. Yes. You’re here about your sister’s child, no doubt.”

“It seems like we have been friends long enough that I might know your name.” Orin smiled. A year was a long time to think. He thought he knew the game his fairy played.

The man laughed long and loud. “Friends, is it?”

“You want rare treasures. Things that matter to people but get overlooked and forgotten. Am I right?” As before, Orin felt the fairy’s interest sharpen. “You don’t really want the baby.”

“You and your sister have proven most interesting folk. Why wouldn’t I want a part of that for myself?” His tone was light and casual.

“You’re lonely.” It surprised Orin. He would have thought there would be others like the fairy to keep him company. The silence was so complete that Orin wondered if he should have kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted was to make the fairy angry. What was it that he had said before? Magic was rare.

Orin reached for him, fumbling around the unfamiliar clearing until his hands found leather and cloth. He gripped the man’s strong arm in apology. “I have a better bargain to make with you.” He spoke softly.

“I’m listening.” The cool edge to the voice let Orin know that he had indeed set off the fairy’s temper.

“You will let my sister learn your name in time to keep her baby. In exchange, I’ll stay with you.”

“You would sacrifice yourself for her again?” The tone was mocking.

For a brief moment, Orin wondered if he should agree. Then he smiled. “It’s a bargain, not a sacrifice. That means I’m getting something out of the deal too.” His fairy wasn’t the only one who was lonely. Spinning in an empty house wasn’t much of a life. And he would get a chance to ask his questions. Not just the man’s name, but who he was and why he tried so hard to cover over his kindness with bargains and anger. “I keep you company, my sister pays with something she values, but doesn’t recognize, and you teach me a little magic here and there to pass the time.”

“All right, you ridiculous man.” The fairy was laughing again, all traces of his temper vanishing. “You win. Your sister can have my name. Though I think I am getting the better end of this.”

“No.” Orin grinned. “I am.”

END

“Straw and Gold” is copyright Kate O'Connor, 2016.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on April 19th with a selection of flash fiction reprints!

]]>Straw and Gold
By Kate O’Connor
Orin did not know the feel of gold. There was none to be found in his father’s mill. There were coins of ...

Straw and Gold

By Kate O’Connor

Orin did not know the feel of gold. There was none to be found in his father’s mill. There were coins of tangy, sharp copper and rough iron fittings on the door, slick steel for the horses’ tack and clattering tin plates for the table. His sister had a silver ring that had belonged to their mother. It was smooth and cool as a night breeze on Jessa’s delicate finger when she held his hand, warm against his skin where it now sat. But none of those things were gold.

The padded stool underneath him was by far the most comfortable piece of furniture he had ever sat upon. The king was a clever man. Fear and wealth could drive a person to incredible feats. He clearly thought to give a bit of both to the woman who might live up to her father’s boasting, even if he thought her father a liar. Magic was rare – and it meant power. Orin tugged at the veil that covered his short hair then ran his fingertips over the wood of the spinning wheel. The finely-sanded surface was slick with polish.

Full transcipt after the cut.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 25 for April 5, 2016. This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you!

Today is a big day for two reasons! First, it's the first episode of our second year! Happy first birthday to GlitterShip! Also, our story today is GlitterShip's first original short story. "Straw and Gold" by Kate O'Connor has never been published anywhere else in either print or audio. Going forward, GlitterShip will bring you one original and one reprint episode per month!

Also, if you are planning to attend Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin, May 27th to May 30th this year, there will be a live GlitterShip reading featuring a few of the authors who have previously appeared on this show. More information will be in listed on the convention schedule when we get nearer to the event.

On a serious note: if you live in the United States, you have probably seen the large number of bigoted, anti-trans bills being proposed in state legislatures. Although I don't want to spend too much time talking politics on this podcast, I do want to urge any American listeners to take a look at their local politics. If your state house is trying to pass laws that legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people, or criminalize trans people just for existing, please contact your representatives to speak out against bigotry. For those of you who have done so already, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

The poet’s sister has teeth as white as new lace. When she speaks, which is rarely, I feel a shiver down my skin.

I am not here for this. I am here to persuade my own sister, Mary, that she has made a terrible mistake, that eloping as she has with this poet who cannot marry her, will not only be her own ruin, but that of our family.

]]>Lamia Victoriana

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

The poet’s sister has teeth as white as new lace. When she speaks, which is rarely, I feel a shiver down my skin.

I am not here for this. I am here to persuade my own sister, Mary, that she has made a terrible mistake, that eloping as she has with this poet who cannot marry her, will not only be her own ruin, but that of our family.

My tongue stumbles on the words, and every indignant speech I practiced on my way here has melted to nothing. The poet looks at me with his calm, beautiful eyes, and Mary sits scandalously close to him, determined to continue in her path of debauchery and wickedness. I cannot take my eyes from the poet’s sister.

Full transcript after the cut:

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 24 for March 15, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

This is the last story for the first year of GlitterShip! We launched last April, and although our episodes have not been quite as regular as originally planned, we've managed to settle into a 2-per-month schedule.

Coming up on April 5th, we will have our FIRST GlitterShip original story, and will continue with one original and one reprint every month.

GlitterShip is currently funded through the end of year 2 (through the end of March 2017) but will be looking for funds to continue the show for a third year -- and hopefully more!

Tansy is a Tasmanian author of science fiction and fantasy. She is a co-host on two podcasts: Verity! and Galactic Suburbia. "Lamia Victoriana" was published as part of Tansy's short story suite Love and Romanpunk, and was previously reprinted in the Mammoth Book of Gaslight Romance.

Lamia Victoriana

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

The poet’s sister has teeth as white as new lace. When she speaks, which is rarely, I feel a shiver down my skin.

I am not here for this. I am here to persuade my own sister, Mary, that she has made a terrible mistake, that eloping as she has with this poet who cannot marry her, will not only be her own ruin, but that of our family.

My tongue stumbles on the words, and every indignant speech I practiced on my way here has melted to nothing. The poet looks at me with his calm, beautiful eyes, and Mary sits scandalously close to him, determined to continue in her path of debauchery and wickedness. I cannot take my eyes from the poet’s sister.

She is pale all over, silver like moonlight. The pale twigged lawn of her day dress makes her skin milky and soft. I have never seen such a creature as her.

‘If you are so worried about my reputation, Fanny, then come with us,’ urges Mary. ‘Be my companion. I know you have always longed to see the continent. We are to Paris, and later, Florence.’ Her deflowering has rendered her more confident than I have ever seen her. She glows with happiness and self-satisfaction.

‘You may have relinquished society’s good opinion, but I cannot countenance such a thought,’ I say.

But the poet’s sister arches her neck and says, ‘Come,’ and I am lost.

Within a week, it becomes obvious that they are not human. The poet and his sister enter rooms so silently it is as if their footsteps are swallowed by the very air. When we leave hotels, one of them speaks softly to the owner, and we leave without money or promissory notes changing hands.

Language is their coin, and they buy every trinket with a pearl from their tongues. I wonder, is someone somewhere keeping track of the cost of this life of ours?

Mary is immersed in her poet. At meal-times, she gazes fiercely at his hands, as if the way that his fingers toy with the silverware or hold a wine glass are in themselves a great work of art. She sighs about hunger or thirst, but does little to assuage such desires.

I eat, but the food tastes like ashes, such is my fear. I should not have followed my sister. Her fate should not be my own. I tell myself I chose this path because of my terror of what Father would do to me if I returned without Mary, but the truth is, I came with them because the poet’s sister asked me to.

On the ninth day, she kisses me.

I am distracted by my latest letter from home. The paper is clutched tight in my fist and my first concern is passing by the poet’s sister in the passageway without our skirts getting tangled together or my hip pressing unduly against hers. Unexpectedly, she turns to me so that our bodies are aligned in that narrow space and gasps her mouth against my own.

I drink her in, for a moment of perfumed air and warmth, and then she is gone, her laughter spilling against the walls as she moves, so fast, so fast.

Gone.

Mary cups her hands over the slight swell of her belly, admiring her new curves in the mirror. “I am greater than I was, Fanny,” she tells me. “The world is greater than it was.”

“You are foolish in love,” I tell her, snipping off the end of my embroidery thread. Love. Is that the fluttering feeling in my bones when the poet’s sister looks at me? Am I a greater fool than my sister?

“Admit it,” says Mary, tugging the silk of her dress out so that she can imagine how she will look when she is more months round. “Paris is beautiful.”

Paris. Paris is chocolate and pastries that we do not drink or eat, though it sits prettily before us at meal-times, in perfect china vessels. Paris is expensive frocks that my sister and her poet cannot afford, persuaded from fancy shops with quiet, forceful words.

Mary buys me a travelling dress, of sturdy linen and wool, with a jaunty hat. The colours are violet and black, as is proper for a widow rather than an unmarried chaperone. I wonder whom it is that I am supposed to be mourning, but I rather like the way that I look in the costume.

On the train to Florence, I stand at the window, gazing at the winding ribbon of Italian countryside. This, this is the world. I am free of the dust and the smallness of Father’s house and our street in London. I feel as if I could fly.

The poet’s sister brushes against me in the narrow cabin, and then again, so that I can tell it was not done by accident. Her fingertips linger on my waist as she steadies herself against the bunk. “Shall we join Mary and my brother in the dining carriage?” she asks.

I shake my head, not willing to say aloud that I cannot bear another meal of artifice and elegance at which nothing is eaten. They all enjoy the ritual, but it only serves to remind me of what we have lost, and what we have left behind. It unsettles me that such a vital human need has been lost to us.

Hungry. I am so very hungry, and yet I cannot swallow even a crumb.

“Well then,” she says, and tugs down the stiff blind that shuts out the light. “We are alone.”

The travelling dress comes apart so easily, as if it were designed for this. A button, a lace, and I am unpeeled. Her hands are cold against the heat of my skin, and her mouth fits against my neck perfectly.

My mind is overwhelmed with her fingers, her palms, the soft mound beneath her thumb, and the whisper of my chemise as it gives way to her. I do not notice the bite until she is so deep inside me that there is no return, no escape, just heat and taste and the rocking pulse of the train through every inch of my skin.

For the first time in days, in weeks, I am sated. Finally, I understand what I was hungering for.

To be food.

Later, much later, there is a whistle. The train has stopped. I am lying dizzy in the lower bunk, my body wrapped in the languid arms of the poet’s sister.

“We’re here,” she says, and slides over my inert body to dress herself. I watch as her white skin disappears into layers of fabric, of stockings and stays and damask. When she is her outer self again, she turns her attentions to me, drawing me to my feet and dressing me as if I am a doll. She even combs my hair, playing the lady’s maid.

When I speak, it is only to say, “So quiet.” Where is the bustle of the other passengers, the calls and urgent conversations, the mutterings as they embark or depart?

“All the time in the world,” she says softly, and powders my face.

Every apartment on the train is empty as we pass. But no, not empty. If I look too closely, I can see a hand here, a foot there, a fallen lock of hair.

She catches me looking. “My brother was hungry,” is her only explanation.

We meet Mary and the poet on the platform. They are bright with colour, delighted with themselves. Several porters come forth to carry our trunks, but they all have a dazed look about their eyes that proves the poet has already paid them with his dulcet words.

“I know we shall love it, here in Florence,” says Mary.

“It is a most accommodating city,” agrees the poet, with a satisfied smile.

We have been in Florence only three days when someone tries to kill us. He is a most unassuming looking gentleman. The poet’s sister and I are wandering the city markets, choosing furnishings and flowers that will look splendid in the new house that her brother is buying for us. He spends his days going from place to place, searching for the perfect villa, while Mary plans the garden where her children will play.

The assassin lunges out of the shadows, a rope knotted in his hands, and wraps it around my lover’s throat. She is caught unawares, but he does not expect me to savage him with the fine brass door-knocker I had been admiring on a nearby stall.

Blood pours from the wound on his head as I hurl the knotted rope away, cooing over the ugly bruises on her throat.

“Do not concern yourself, Fanny,” she says in a beautiful rasp. “No one shall destroy us.”

“You are not one of them,” the man gasps, holding his sleeve to the wound. “Do not let the lamia take your will and your life from you, Frances Wolstonecraft.”

I shiver that he knows my name. Or perhaps it is that other word — lamia. I do not know what it means.

“Come near us again,” said the poet’s sister. “And my brother will kill you.” She takes my hand, and we run away together, through the market.

“Who is that man?” I ask at the supper table that night. The poet, his sister and Mary all look at each other as if I have said something unpleasant, a truth not to be named aloud. “Why does he hate us?” I persist. Am I the only one not to know the secrets of this new family we have formed? I am not a child!

“He is an old enemy of my kind,” the poet says finally, shifting his wine glass one precise inch to the left, so that the candlelight makes a prettier pattern of ruby shapes on the tablecloth. “He hates us for being. That is all. His name is Julius. He is not important.”

“He was so strong.” I can still remember that look in his eyes, as if my lady were some kind of monster.

“We are stronger,” says the poet’s sister, and squeezes my fingers with her own.

From Florence, we travel to Switzerland, determined that our plan to live together in all happiness and beauty shall not be spoiled by the horrid man, Julius.

I wonder sometimes if he was sent by our father, if the poet only wished to spare Mary and I from that awful truth, that our own family would rather see us dead than happy.

We have our house of dreams, finally, in the midst of such green splendour, and a good distance outside the town where prying eyes might seek to spoil our circle. The poet and Mary visit the town often, to buy pretty trinkets, and to slake their thirst. When they are gone, it is as if the house is ours, only ours, and the poet’s sister and I can finally love each other as we long to.

She needs no drink but what she takes from me, in sweet drugging kisses that make me feel alive.

Mary’s child is born; a perfect silver nub of a creature with bright eyes. She is hungry, so very hungry, and nuzzles her constantly, sucking, biting, clawing at her for food. She hires a nursemaid from the town, and then another, but the babe’s thirst is too great, and for a while it is as if we are constantly digging graves for the scraps left behind.

Left unsaid is our belief she will not survive.

We will have to move again, and soon, but we have been so happy here. It pains us to speak of leaving the garden, the egg-shell drawing room, the balcony that looks out over the valley.

We stay too long.

I am awoken from a deep befogged sleep against the body of my beloved when I hear a scream in the night. The baby makes so much noise that I am content at first to ignore the interruption, but then there is another, and the shattering of glass.

The poet’s sister sits up in bed, shining and glorious in her white nightgown. “Him,” is all she says, and then she is up on her feet, hair streaming behind her, teeth gleaming in the darkness.

He has come for us.

The downstairs parlour is alight as we come down the stairs: flames crackle up the curtains and blacken the wooden walls. My beloved gasps as she finds the body of her brother in a pool of silver blood, his body pierced through the heart and his head lying some distance from his neck.

“Fanny!” Mary screams, and bursts through the flaming doorway like an angel, bearing her child wrapped in a sage-green blanket trimmed with ivory lace. “Take her,” she begs, placing the wailing bundle in my arms.

I stand there, immobile as Mary and my beloved turn back to the smoke and the flames, ready to avenge the death of the poet.

He — Julius, slayer of lamia — walks through the wall of flames with his sword held high.

It is a short sword, and bronzed rather than steel. How odd, the things you notice at such moments.

My sister bares her teeth, as sharp as those of my beloved, and they swarm him. I do not want to watch. I flee, through the kitchen, where I grab the only weapon I can find, a kitchen knife, and spare cloths for the baby. Then I run out of the house, my niece crying in my arms, down the hill, away from the beautiful house.

I feel it minutes later, the death of my beloved. It is a blossoming pain in my chest, as if someone has carved out my heart. I do not feel Mary die; we have no such connection. But my tears fall for them both.

I run and hide, but the baby is hungry and she will not stop crying. Finally I press her mouth again my upper arm and she suckles deeply, her own teeth finding the vein and drinking in great gulping swallows. I shall have to wind her afterwards, and the thought is almost enough to make me burst with laughter.

Too late. I should have silenced her minutes ago. He is upon us. I hear him treading the crisp grass nearby, and the rasp of his smoke-filled lungs. “Frances,” he says, as if he still thinks he has an ally in me. “Give me the child.”

The baby’s feed is not as delicious as that of my beloved. It hurts, though there is still a satisfaction in it, in knowing that I am food, that I am needed. Little Mary. Mine now. “No,” I say, quite calmly, though he is standing not far from me, and he has a sword. I do not think he will hurt me. For some reason, he does not believe I am one of the monsters. I keep the knife hidden in my skirts, so that he shall not see that I am able to defend myself.

“Listen to me, Frances. I have tracked these creatures for years. They were the last, the three up there in the house.”

My family. Tears rush anew down my cheeks, and I cannot wipe them away without disturbing the babe.

“There is only that one,” he continues. “When it is gone, the world will be safe. One less monster to ravage families, to destroy the lives of innocents such as yourself. Lamia who are born rather than made are the most powerful, the most dangerous. I have worked for centuries to weaken these creatures, and if this one lives to make more of its kind, it may be centuries more before they are wiped from the face of the earth.”

The baby releases me with a gasp and leans against my breast, breathing deeply. She is asleep. My niece, the perfect silver child. My daughter, now. He cannot even acknowledge that she is a ‘she’.

“No,” I say again.

“You can go home, Frances,” he says, in a soothing voice. “Home to your father, to your old life…”

The thought of it makes me shudder. “No!” I scream, and run at him with the knife.

He does not expect it, even now. He thinks I am food, a docile milk cow, with no reason to defy him now that my lover and sister are dead. I catch him in the neck, and he twists badly, falling down the hillside onto his sword.

I do not think he survived. How could he, a blow like that? After months of standing asid, as my sister and the poet killed for food, I have become a murderer myself.

Perhaps the murderer of thousands, by keeping my little Mary alive. The blood of my body will not sustain her forever. But I have learned that the lamia power of persuasive words is mine to share, if I hold the baby close to my skin, and that has been enough to get us from train to train, from country to country.

We will travel as far as we can, to a land so distant that another Julius can never find us. She will grow, my darling daughter, and she will feed. Some day, perhaps, she shall make me another lover to replace what I lost. We shall be a family, all together.

She shall live, my little Mary, long after I have gone, and live, and live.

I am not sorry for it.

END

]]>Lamia Victoriana
by Tansy Rayner Roberts
The poet’s sister has teeth as white as new lace. When she speaks, which is rarely, I feel a shiver down my ...

Lamia Victoriana

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

The poet’s sister has teeth as white as new lace. When she speaks, which is rarely, I feel a shiver down my skin.

I am not here for this. I am here to persuade my own sister, Mary, that she has made a terrible mistake, that eloping as she has with this poet who cannot marry her, will not only be her own ruin, but that of our family.

My tongue stumbles on the words, and every indignant speech I practiced on my way here has melted to nothing. The poet looks at me with his calm, beautiful eyes, and Mary sits scandalously close to him, determined to continue in her path of debauchery and wickedness. I cannot take my eyes from the poet’s sister.

Full transcript after the cut:

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 24 for March 15, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

This is the last story for the first year of GlitterShip! We launched last April, and although our episodes have not been quite as regular as originally planned, we've managed to settle into a 2-per-month schedule.

Coming up on April 5th, we will have our FIRST GlitterShip original story, and will continue with one original and one reprint every month.

GlitterShip is currently funded through the end of year 2 (through the end of March 2017) but will be looking for funds to continue the show for a third year -- and hopefully more!

There are nine police cars. I count them again just to be sure and because counting usually calms me.

Arielle watches to see if I’m freaking out, asks if I want to leave. I tell her I’m OK but she’s not reassured so I give her a sexy smile. If she would kiss me now, I’d have somewhere pleasant to channel my beating heart. She leans towards me and I see that she’s used her superpowers to read my mind again, but then another police car arrives, drawing her a [...]

]]>Je me souviens

by Su J. Sokol

There are nine police cars. I count them again just to be sure and because counting usually calms me.

Arielle watches to see if I’m freaking out, asks if I want to leave. I tell her I’m OK but she's not reassured so I give her a sexy smile. If she would kiss me now, I’d have somewhere pleasant to channel my beating heart. She leans towards me and I see that she’s used her superpowers to read my mind again, but then another police car arrives, drawing her attention away.

Now ten police cars face two hundred and thirty-six demonstrators. We are peaceful, banging pots and chanting slogans. Our numbers include children, old people, commuters on bikes, dogs wearing red bandanas. A cop is speaking through a bullhorn but no one can hear him because of the clanging and chanting. Will they arrest us now? My heart beats like the wings of a falcon, trying to escape the prison of my chest.

Full transcript after the cut.

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 23 for March 1, 2016. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

I'm extending the period for responses to the GlitterShip listener favorites poll until March 5th. You can find a link in the transcript for this episode at GlitterShip.com

Su is an activist, a cyclist, and a writer of interstitial fiction. A former legal services lawyer from New York City, Sokol immigrated to Montréal in 2004 where she works as a social rights advocate. Her short stories have been published in The Future Fire and Spark: A Creative Anthology. Her debut novel, Cycling to Asylum, was long-listed for the 2015 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. "Je me souviens" was first published in 2012 by the Future Fire and was recently republished in TFFX, the The Future Fire's tenth anniversary anthology.

Our guest reader today is Leigh Wallace.

Leigh is a Canadian writer, artist and public servant. You can find her latest story in Tesseracts 19: Superhero Universe and her art at leighfive.deviantart.com

I've also been asked for trigger warnings in the past. This story does contain references to police violence and anti-gay torture.

Je me souviens

by Su J. Sokol

There are nine police cars. I count them again just to be sure and because counting usually calms me.

Arielle watches to see if I’m freaking out, asks if I want to leave. I tell her I’m OK but she's not reassured so I give her a sexy smile. If she would kiss me now, I’d have somewhere pleasant to channel my beating heart. She leans towards me and I see that she’s used her superpowers to read my mind again, but then another police car arrives, drawing her attention away.

Now ten police cars face two hundred and thirty-six demonstrators. We are peaceful, banging pots and chanting slogans. Our numbers include children, old people, commuters on bikes, dogs wearing red bandanas. A cop is speaking through a bullhorn but no one can hear him because of the clanging and chanting. Will they arrest us now? My heart beats like the wings of a falcon, trying to escape the prison of my chest.

I tell myself that this is Québec. They will not put a black bag over my head. They will not throw me in the trunk of one of their cars. They will not burn me with cigarettes after beating me. No, this doesn’t happen here ... I am pretty sure. They have granted me permanent residence and have even hired me to teach their children math. So I will stay here and demonstrate for my students.

The police open the trunks of their vans. I’m concentrating on my breathing, on not blanking out, when a little ball of energy in a red cape flies into my legs.

“La policía, they are here to catch the bad guys, Papa?” he asks me, his speech the usual jumble of French, Spanish and English.

Before I can speak, Arielle answers. “No, mon petit chéri, this is not why they’re here today.” Her face is an eloquent mix of amusement and sadness.

“I will catch them, then! But first Papa must fly me home so I can eat my supper.”

“C’est correct? Can we go home now?” Arielle asks me.

I shrug, hiding my relief, and lift Raphaël high over my head. I run full out towards our home, fast enough so that his cape flies out behind him and fast enough that my own need to run is satisfied. Our four-year-old superhero has come to the rescue.

The next morning, despite a sleep fragmented by nightmares, I’m energized, thinking about being a part of something important again. This was not my first demonstration in my new home, but the first of this kind—spontaneous, focused, a little confrontational. And joyous. Even more so than the mass manifestation when our numbers first surpassed 250,000.

That day, I stood at the overpass by rue Berri, Raphaël on my shoulders, watching the street below swell with a current of demonstrators wide as the Rio Grande. I’m good at counting, my eyes instinctively grouping people into hundreds, thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands. Surely they must listen now, I thought. Surely they will see the beauty, the rightness of our cause!

Our euphoria was short-lived as we watched the news and listened to the lies about our goals, our numbers. Last night, with our pots, with our “casseroles”, we banged out our anger and turned it into music. I am proud, too, that les casseroles, “los caserolazos”, are borrowed from the political traditions of my own people.

Now, standing at the front of my high school math class, I feel strong, in control. Numbers—they do not lie to you; they do not let you down. I explain the first problem, my eyes scanning the classroom, counting students. Someone is missing. When I’m presenting the second problem, Xavier stumbles in, limping slightly and with his left eye blackened.

I don’t ask him for his late pass nor for his homework. I even let him read whatever it is he’s awkwardly hidden behind his math textbook. A large oval bruise on his upper arm is already aging, turning from black to green. As I answer a student’s question, my mind goes through a familiar set of choices: the police, youth protection, the directrice of the school ... When the authorities were called in last time, it did not end well: denials and threats of legal action by his politically connected family, followed by unexplained absences.

I ask Xavier to remain after class is over. He approaches my desk, giving me a sullen look from under his long hair. There seems little point in asking him what happened, so instead, I ask him what he’s reading. He hesitates, then shrugs and places it in my hand.

“C’est une bande-dessinée. A ‘Comic book’ in English.”

“I am not anglophone,” I say.

“Yeah, but you’re not from here, are you?”

He says this like I might be from Mars or some other planet.

“Why do the people in the bande-dessinée have the heads of animals?” I ask. “Are they superheroes, these animal-headed people?”

“I’m not ten years old. I don’t believe in superheroes.”

“I would like to help you, Xavi.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help. And I can’t stay. There’s a student union meeting. To vote on the strike.”

Enthusiasm has replaced his precocious cynicism. But then I watch him limp away, a sense of helplessness making my own limbs feel heavy.

The end of the day finds me in the teachers’ lounge. Luc joins me, compositions from his students clutched in his big hands. I gaze up at my best friend and he quickly drops down beside me.

“Qu’est-ce que tu as?” he asks, reading me as always.

“Xavier came into class today all beaten up. I don’t know what I should do.”

“If you suspect something ...”

“It is beyond suspecting. I know what’s happening and it’s not just beatings.”

“Are you sure of this?” he asks.

I simply look at him. He knows about my past. Not just the torture but the rapes as well. Luc was able to get this information out of me even when the tribunal could not.

“Don’t worry, Gabriel, I have friends at youth protection. We’ll find a way to help him.”

I feel a little reassured. I move closer, so that I can lean against him. He lets me, even puts his arm around my shoulder. Some of the darkness leaks out of me.

If Arielle were here, she would be happy, seeing how I can still take comfort from other men. She was my lawyer at the refugee hearing and accepts me as I am. She tried to prepare me for their questions, but I failed her. On such and such a date, they asked me, had I been tortured for my political crimes or for the crime of being queer? It seemed important to be precise about this, but I was confused. Maybe I was tortured for the former and raped for the latter. The fear of disappointing the officials, of making them angry, made my words flee. Perhaps that’s why, in the middle of the hearing, I blanked out.

“I should go home,” I say to Luc. “To cook supper. Arielle is counting on me.”

“How is Arielle?”

“She is good. We had very hot sex last night. Do you want to hear about it?”

I feel happy thinking about this while leaning against Luc’s shoulder. It was when Arielle and I made love for the first time, on the floor of her office, that I realized she had superpowers. I hadn’t been sure before, even though she’d rescued me from the hearing. Arielle might even have won my case, but instead, she found a way to spare me the pain of testifying. She offered to marry me, explaining it in logical, lawyerly terms. She’d just gone through another in a series of unreliable roommates and untrustworthy boyfriends. She wanted someone who shared her political values to also share, on a longterm basis, the household expenses and cooking. And one other thing. She wanted a child.

Luc tells me maybe another time, after a few beers.

“Will we go somewhere that has ‘Maudite’ beer?” I ask him. “I like the picture on the label, of the flying canoe, la chasse galerie.”

“Speaking of which, I have that book for Raphaël. Of old Québecois tales, including a few chasse galerie stories.” He hands me a large volume, the edges soft with use.

“Merci beaucoup mon cher ami,” I say, kissing him on both cheeks and then once on the lips for good measure. He accepts my shows of affection with his usual aplomb.

That night, I tell Raphaël my own version of a chasse galerie story.

“Once upon a time, men were chopping down trees deep in the winter forest. They were sad because they missed their children and partners.”

“Where were they, Papa?”

“In another forest ... planting trees to replace those that had been cut down. So one day, the men boarded a magic canoe to visit their loved ones.”

“Were they superheroes?”

“Claro que si. They could mix their powers together into one big superpower. That’s how they made the canoe fly. But there was a super villain too, and he ... he sprinkled forgetting dust into their eyes so that they could not remember who they were, and their canoe started falling down to the earth.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“Flying Boy came to the rescue. He brought the boat down safely and used a magical washcloth to wipe the forgetting dust out of the men’s eyes.”

“Was Flying Boy wearing his red cape?”

“Yes. And now it’s time for superheroes to go to sleep.”

“Papa? Why did the super villain make the men forget things? Why is he bad?”

I tuck him into bed, trying to ignore a growing darkness. I make myself think of the night Rapha was born. The moment I held him, I knew he’d been gifted with strong powers and that it was my job to protect him until he was old enough to use them safely. This responsibility is what has kept me from ending my own worthless life.

Arielle is watching the nightly update about the strike. There’s a late-breaking development about a student who’s in critical condition after a cop's plastic bullet struck her in the eye. I pull Arielle onto my lap and hide my face in her curls while counting to myself. Maybe Arielle will use her powers tonight to make me forget things that strike and burn and tear into tender flesh.

On Facebook, I learn that this week has been declared “une semaine de résistance” for secondary school students. Our school votes to go on strike, but staff must report to work as usual. I stay in the teachers’ lounge, not wanting to be alone, but I’m restless, so I go down the hall and stand at the entrance. At nine o’clock, the police arrive in full riot gear and declare the students’ picket illegal. They open their trunks and pull out shiny yellow vests and canisters of malevolent substances. I walk back into the teachers’ lounge.

“We should be out there,” I say to the others.

A debate ensues but many teachers are missing, still in their classrooms.

“I’ll get them,” Luc volunteers. He turns to me. “Stay here until I get back.”

I wait for a while, then go to the front entrance again and see the beginnings of trouble between a group of students and the riot cops. Just then, Luc appears.

I run outside and Luc catches up to me, his hand closing around my upper arm. I pull him with me as I throw myself between the students and the riot police. We’re shoved but keep to our feet and Luc is saying “Calmez-vous, calmez-vous,” making eye contact with each of the cops in front of us, patiently explaining that we are teachers, a French teacher and a Mathematics teacher, and that we must all remain calm to set a good example.

After a few tense moments, more teachers come outside. We join hands, forming a barrier between the students and the police. The students chant slogans like “Education is a right” and “À qui nos écoles? À nous nos écoles”. Luc pulls L’Étranger from his back pocket and begins reciting from it. I spot Xavier, a courageous smile on his face. By the end of the morning, almost all of my colleagues have joined us and the police have retreated to their cars. I grip Luc’s hand tighter and think about kissing every single teacher standing with us. With these heroes beside me, I feel invincible.

The next night I have a beer with Luc at a café on rue St. Denis. I finish five ‘Maudites’ and am feeling a nice buzz from that. I told Arielle I’d eat something with Luc. I can’t lie to her so I steal a handful of his fries. He offers me his burger but I shake my head, too keyed up to eat much.

“Shouldn’t we be going?” I ask. “The manif is scheduled to begin at 21 hours.”

“It’s not like the theatre, my friend. We don’t have to be there when the curtain rises. You sure this is alright with Arielle? There’s more risk being arrested at night.”

“I have promised to be careful.”

At Parc Émilie-Gamelin, I’m in my element. It’s hot for late September. A thick darkness envelops me. There’s an aura of unpredictability that I appreciate because deep down, I’m an optimist who believes that whatever happens next has got to be better than what we already have. My lips move to the chants. An anarchist marching band playing circus music draws me in deeper, to where the park is filled with magic.

Luc introduces me to people he knows. After a while, I wander off as he gets into conversation with one of his ex-girlfriends. There’s a group of men wearing dark clothing on the fringes of the manif. They’re rowdy and loud and exude a dangerous energy. I’m drawn to them. I also want to run from them. I find myself a couple of metres closer to the group, though I don’t remember deciding to approach them. In fact, I remember deciding the opposite. My feet are taking more steps in their direction and I can’t make myself stop. The men are carrying something in their hands. Their eyes flash yellow in the darkness. I’m terrified and mesmerized as I come closer still. One raises his arm with a look of gleeful malice. Someone grabs my shirt from behind.

“Câlisse de tabarnak,” Luc shouts. “Can’t I turn my back on you for a minute?” My collar is bunched up in his fist as he guides me, not gently, out of the park.

“Who are those guys?” I ask. “They looked like skinheads with hair.”

“Agents provocateurs or just assholes. What difference does it make? You know to stay away from them.”

“They have evil powers. I couldn’t pull away.”

“You’ve had too many beers. It’s time to go home.”

I leave with him, but I know I’ll be back. I’ve found another activity where it feels right that I’m still alive. I count through the list in my head: Taking care of Raphaël, teaching my students, making love, going to manifs. I’ll just have to be careful to avoid the super villains. If our collective actions succeed, it may even give me back some of the life force stolen from me when I was a teenager.

Arielle and I are watching the news. She’s become a news junkie in the same way that I’ve become a junkie for demonstrations.

“Our government makes me ashamed to be Québécoise,” Arielle says.

“The real Québec is in the streets, marching and chanting and demonstrating. Come out with me more. You would feel better,” I tell her.

She touches my cheek. “You reassuring me. It should be the other way around.”

Of course the police violence and new repressive laws frighten me. But conditions in Québec, politically and socially, are still better than in the country where I was born. It’s for this very reason that whenever things become worse here, I feel nauseous, like the world is spinning in the wrong direction.

“Let’s go together to the nude manif tomorrow. It will be fun. I can put fleur-de-lys pasties on your nipples.”

She smiles and I know I’ve convinced her.

The next day, Arielle calls me at school to say that they’re concerned about Raphaël at the garderie. He’s telling everyone that he’s a superhero and trying to fly off tables and playground equipment. They’ve asked for a meeting.

“I can go, Arielle.”

“They’ve asked that I come, specifically.”

“That is sexism.”

“No, it’s more that...”

“What?”

“It’s because of what you told Raphaël, last time this happened. That he needed to wait until he was older to use his superpowers. And to only use them when they’re needed.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“No, not angry but ... We’ll talk more later. Are you still going to the manif?”

“Yes.”

“There’s usually less police violence at the nude ones. You’ll be careful?”

“Of course. I love you.”

Without Arielle and Raphaël, the apartment feels a little sinister. It’s better in Raphaël ’s room where I can sense him in his toys and artwork. I hold on to one of his superhero figures and draw strength from that. Next, I enter our bedroom. I wrap my arms around Arielle’s pillow and breathe in her familiar odour. Feeling stronger, I go to the shelf in the back of my closet and find the box that I haven’t opened since my uncle smuggled me out of my country. I take out the red cape, red feathered mask and calf-high red boots. The cape against my nose, I smell the streets of my childhood and adolescence.

My mother sewed this costume, but she did not bring me up to believe in superheroes. My parents were university professors. Both were politically active, proud of my work for the student newspaper and tolerant of my sexuality. Their openness and support encouraged me to finally tell what my uncle did to me.

No, my parents did not believe in superheroes. Nor did they believe in super villains. Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it can’t kill you. They never should have gone to the police. My uncle was too powerful. Their so-called car accident left me without protection, with thoughts of vengeance like cold ashes in my mouth.

I hold the costume in my hands, remembering when I wore it so proudly. It was after “los casserolazos”, after the occupation, and after the kiss-in, but the taste of my classmates’ lips was still fresh in my memory. The superhero demonstration was the last one before I was taken. Like me, only parts of the costume survived, but maybe some traces of the powers that were stolen from me remain in the material. I shove it into a bag and head for my bike.

Everyone is friendly, many people talk to me. Some take my picture. I know I’m good looking but I take no pride in this. I did nothing to earn my looks, yet, it’s something I’ve had to pay for, repeatedly. “Excuse me,” I say to the person who’s chatting with me.“I have to stop here.” On the side street under a circus canopy stands a man wearing a red kerchief who has the dark eyes and quirked smile of my country of birth. He’s holding a six-inch tall toy polar bear banging a miniature pot with a tiny, perfectly formed wooden spoon. The bear is wearing the flag of Québec as a cape.

“How much, monsieur?” I ask.

“Just take it, hermano.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Yes. It is for your child. Take it.”

I hold the bear, sensing in its erect posture and soft gaze a power to protect. I look up to thank the man, wondering how he knows about Rapha, but he’s gone.

At home, I give Rapha his gift. I let him turn it on so that he can hear the pot banging, a sweet, high pitched clang clang ... clangclangclang. I tell him to keep it safe because of its magic, then kiss him goodnight.

That evening, on Facebook, I see the first photo of myself at the nude manif. In the next couple of days, more photos follow, including one where my back is to the camera as I look over my shoulder. I’m holding up the toy polar bear with its flag-of-Québec cape. My other fist is raised as well. This is the photo that goes viral.

Wednesday, I arrive at school early and, uncharacteristically, so does Luc. He comes into my classroom with a